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Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#421

Post by slotrans »

solardev wrote: post #47

I actually prefer the subscription model for my software, if the monthly price is reasonable. It gives me faith that they can actually sustain their business and pay their employees to maintain and improve the service over time. I hate the other model, where with Windows and Office you end up getting useless forced upgrades and terrible makeovers because they need that upgrade revenue every few years. Or the ad drive…

Office upgrades were never forced.

I pay for an Office365 subscription so I can have it on Mac, but on my Windows PC I use Office 2010, which I paid for when it was current. It is lightning fast compared to the current release of Office, and has all the features I could ever want.

The company I worked for '05-'12 used Office 2003 that whole time. It was fine!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#422

Post by throwaway2037 »

FpUser wrote: post #285
solardev wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily a generational thing. I grew up on DOS before Windows was common, remember v1 of OpenOffice and Phoenix and the birth of CSS and JS, and have been making webpages since before the div tag was invented. I bought and used many tools like Notepad++ and Ultraedit and Sublime, and used the heck out of Paint Shop Pro and some GIMP and the rest. But many of those tools are quite a bit less powerful than…

>"Take IntelliJ for example. There was a big uproar when they moved to a subscription model" They did not move. They still offer perpetual license. Otherwise I would not be using their products.

I don't where/when/how this myth started. If anyone from JetBrains is reading this, please asking you sales/PR/marketing team to make it crystal clear on your website so that we can kill off this silly myth that hurts your excellent brand.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#423

Post by thot_experiment »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #376
aplummer wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe SaaS is moral > I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative… and now when I can afford to pay for subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS is so fucking untenable that I just can't. Imagine stealing peoples work you admit you can afford, and claiming their business model is immoral!

It is immoral. The copyright monopoly plus copy sales model was bad enough. Now we live in digital fiefdoms and get sold like cattle to advertisers and other developers. The only moral model is free software.

Correct. Artificial scarcity is immoral, we need to move to a system where it's not necessary to restrict people from having access to something that has a real cost approaching zero in order to collect rents.

SaaS is a perversion created by a system that cannot separate value from scarcity even though the reality is that software is infinitely replicable.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#424

Post by InCityDreams »

soulofmischief wrote: post #187
crazygringo wrote: post #40

Not really, because I saw too many software companies go out of business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the next major version -- the ownership model of software can be awfully feast-or-famine for developers' income, it's a very tough/risky business model. Generally speaking, I'm happy to pay a subscription because this way I get a steady stream of all the updates, and it's much more likely the compa…

I get that modern software is a living breathing thing, but it's absurd to compare that to music albums, which should not be constantly modified and reissued post-release.

...remasters? Conversion of tape to plastic to mp.... Newer, better(?), tech available for engineers. Zappa [iirc] made his plastic lp's 22 minutes a side as that gave the optimum wiggle room for needles, both at the presses and domestically. Led Zep (ahem) re-released an awful lot of original material.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#425

Post by bruce511 »

Silhouette wrote: post #292
themacguffinman wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be advisable, but tell that to the XP-for-life or 7-for-life people. It won't actually stop working, it just means you're much more vulnerable to malware.

It won't actually stop working, it just means you're much more vulnerable to malware. The biggest threats haven't come from direct external assaults on the OS for years. I expect a typical consumer device is more at risk from an out of date browser than any other type of vulnerability now. The biggest risk for most of us as personal users is someone stealing our data via a hack, which often doesn't require root/admin…

Your hardware point is interesting in the sense that it represents the non-saas model, but also appears to not be working.

So I get it, they bought the hardware with a one-time purchase. The maker moved on. One day the OS moves on.

But the hardware company is predatory for not writing a (free?) driver for their obsolete hardware on a new OS?

Surely if the model is "buy once" then there's no expectation to return to the well for "software updates"?

The solution is, as you noted, to freeze the OS. Which is perfectly fine, as long as you are happy doing that.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#426

Post by spc476 »

sanjayio wrote: post #93
quaintdev wrote: post #6

And this is exactly the reason I self host[0]. I am pretty sure it's not just me. I have seen r/selfhosted[1] skyrocket in it popularity over past year or two. The number of applications that you can self host are increasing daily. The only problem at the moment with self hosting seems to be the maintenance and setup but that also will be solved once many people start doing it. History repeats itself. Self hosting to…

You self-host things that are easily self-hostable. You wouldn’t self-host something like emails or error reporting.

I self-host email. And my website. And DNS. I've been doing so for over two decades now.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#427

Post by matheusmoreira »

thot_experiment wrote: post #423
matheusmoreira wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is immoral. The copyright monopoly plus copy sales model was bad enough. Now we live in digital fiefdoms and get sold like cattle to advertisers and other developers. The only moral model is free software.

Correct. Artificial scarcity is immoral, we need to move to a system where it's not necessary to restrict people from having access to something that has a real cost approaching zero in order to collect rents. SaaS is a perversion created by a system that cannot separate value from scarcity even though the reality is that software is infinitely replicable.

Yes. It's the 21st century, artificial scarcity no longer makes any sense. Globally networked computers exist and they trivially render any information abundant at negligible costs.

People need new business models. Selling bits doesn't work. Attempting to make it work requires the destruction of free computing as we know it.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#428

Post by bestnameever »

horsawlarway wrote: post #390
aplummer wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe SaaS is moral > I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative… and now when I can afford to pay for subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS is so fucking untenable that I just can't. Imagine stealing peoples work you admit you can afford, and claiming their business model is immoral!

These are mostly non-sequiturs, with some plausible cases. For example - I don't think subscription licensing for media is moral, and I think legally it's a rife place for some serious case law. Simple example - Recording shows for personal consumption (time shifting) is absolutely allowed under current copyright law. If I subscribe to netflix for a month and record every show I want to watch to my personal NAS... I'…

> But... what if I really do want a moral way to consume netflix content at a later date for a non-recurring, non-changed-at-their-whim cost? Well - sucks to be me because there's literally no way to buy it. I think that's also fairly immoral. I'm literally being held captive to a subscription for eternity, with no way to negotiate the deal, and the real loss of any catalogue item at any time with no recourse. Moral? Fuck no. Legal? Sure.

> So... Where is the middle ground? Because I'd really, desperately like to see a better middle ground. Where I don't have to feel like a thief, and also don't feel like I'm getting extorted to watch some shows.

Most content can be purchased outside of Netflix at some point, on DVD or another medium.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#429

Post by joe_the_user »

solardev wrote: post #47

I actually prefer the subscription model for my software, if the monthly price is reasonable. It gives me faith that they can actually sustain their business and pay their employees to maintain and improve the service over time. I hate the other model, where with Windows and Office you end up getting useless forced upgrades and terrible makeovers because they need that upgrade revenue every few years. Or the ad drive…

I actually prefer the subscription model for my software, if the monthly price is reasonable.

Once the company has lock-in, you have no control over their pricing. The reason a company offers a good deal on a subscription is to get enough customers for it to be worthwhile to start soaking those same customers for whatever they are willing to pay - or imposing things to get more money or etc.

You can see this play out with MS Windows, Twitter and so-forth.

It gives me faith that they can actually sustain their business and pay their employees to maintain and improve the service over time.

Edit: It's amazing to me that someone thinks they can give a company money and expect it to be spent on what they want. The company always to prefers to pocket your dollars as profit. If you send them a check or something, that's what they'll do.

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