I realized from reading these comments that I basically don't pay for software except for games. Everything else is just FOSS.
Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
481–490 of 710 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#482I'm tired of it and everything (analytics, growth hacking, conversion metrics, ad-tech) that comes along with it. It has sapped my desire to make good products. I've decided to abandon all VC wisdom and go retro. I'm experimenting with an extremely liberal pricing model and business ethos for my upcoming products and hoping against hope that it succeeds. https://koodpad.com/notes/why-pay/
I mostly agree, but for the love of god please replace that Comic Sans. :)
Ha ha ha. It's a deliberate decision and its my very humble hat-tip to one of my heroes, Simon Peyton Jones.
"This is a very funny question, why I use Comic Sans. So. All my talks use Comic Sans, and I frequently see little remarks, “Simon Peyton Jones, great talk about Haskell, but why did he use Comic Sans?” But nobody’s ever been able to tell me what’s wrong with it. I think it’s a nice, legible font, I like it. So until someone explains to me — I understand that it’s meant to be naff, but I don't care about naff stuff, it’s meant to be able to read it. So if you’ve got some rational reasons why I should not, then I’ll listen to them. But just being unfashionable, I don’t care."
Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#483I 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…
> 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.
And I'm free to stop subscribing if the service gets worse (or doesn't get better as fast as I'd like).
Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. And I'm free to stop subscribing if the service gets worse (or doesn't get better as fast as I'd like).
Unless you have data in the service in some proprietary format, say.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#485One issue is that when you build on someone else's platform (Chrome Webstore, iOS App Store, etc.), you have to periodically make updates just to stay in the store. Sometimes these are very large changes, like with MV3.
If I sold my software one-off, I could charge people again for an MV3-compatible version to cover the cost of the transition. But many/most people wouldn't understand what was happening, and there would probably be a lot of confusion/unhappiness with having to pay again just to maintain the same feature set.
People are used to buying subscriptions, and part of the reason why is that developers are constantly having to update their software just to stay 'alive' in the app stores. I do long for the days of purchasing software versions and upgrading when needed. But those days are fading into the rear view mirror, it would seem.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#486I've been of this opinion for essentially all consumer grade items since the beginning of the trend years ago. For Enterprise software I'm squishier because I have to bear in mind a bunch of things where long cycles and certain guarantees are contractually baked in that aren't as easy to weasel out of.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#487> You'll own nothing and be happy.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
This exact behavior drives planned obsolescence. This has led to so much waste over past century that it's going to be very hard to go back. I was baffled that we invented a bulb that could last 100 years over a century ago and I still have to change bulbs every year or two. There are nice documentaries about this [0] The end of ownership https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOO-pYUl9-w [1] This is why we can't have nice…
Wait, the subscription economy puts planned obsolescence to an end, because keeping the product in working condition is now the service-provider's problem.
See games for where this is going.
Upfront payment to buy the product + season pass (subscription) + micro transactions. 2 years later it's the end of the product and the cycle begins anew with the major version number incremented by one.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#489I've been of this opinion for essentially all consumer grade items since the beginning of the trend years ago. For Enterprise software I'm squishier because I have to bear in mind a bunch of things where long cycles and certain guarantees are contractually baked in that aren't as easy to weasel out of.
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Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
#490My main issue with Saas tools is they keep changing and it's not always clear why or that there are any benefits. Many of the changes feel like they were resume driven. Case in point, Dropbox.
Many years ago they were awesome. Now they've added a much heavier client UI client. I stopped using them because of that and also I just noticed a huge uptick in resource usage.