This is truly awful, and honestly shouldn't surprise anyone given the modern cloud approach to software. I've been thinking a lot lately about ownership. If I have a book, I can interact with it the way the publisher expects (I can read it). But being a physical object, I can also do lots of other things with my book. I can burn it. I can give it to a friend. I can sell it. I can draw in it. I can rip it up and use i…
One of the big problems is that software doesn't sell (or at least is really hard to sell). Piracy and that pesky "pay once unless you want to upgrade" problem companies aren't fond of. Services are easy to sell and code on your server is hard to pirate. Still, there are gems out there, like Obsidian. Your files, put them where you want, how you want. Use the tool however you want, extend it if you want. Every other…
No two environments are identical, you don't know what weird things they've done, this causes all sorts of new bugs.
We don't know how to write bug free software for a reasonable price, and it's a lot easier to debug and update software on a server you control than on a customers computer.
On a server no one complains about auto upgrades, on a customer computer there's going to be a lot of people who don't upgrade but still want support, even if you try and force auto upgrades (which will annoy people) someone will have figured out a way to prevent that from happening.
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I think for a lot of companies SAAS is unfortunately the responsible financial decision.