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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?

#591

Post by vedranm »

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 e-mail. It's not always easy, but it's doable. It got easier over time with tools like docker-mailserver [1] and Mail-in-a-Box [2].

[1] https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver

[2] https://mailinabox.email/

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

#592

Post by TeMPOraL »

FearlessNebula wrote: post #353
closeparen wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are funny. The automakers pretend they are simply selling an object for a pile of money, but in the real world of the dealership & lending ecosystem it's all 60-72 month loans and service contracts and warranties. And it's all pretty smarmy compared to what people would accept from a reputable national brand. If cars are subscription products anyway, then having the automakers internalize & centralize that part…

A loan from the bank is very different than a service or subscription with the manufacturer to me

On that note, perhaps banks should be the middlemen between companies seeking recurring revenue and people seeking one-off purchases? Have the company charge $X, the bank turns that into $X/24 + interest - this already exists, but it's too tied into the credit system. Perhaps there's a space for innovation there, to make a product specialized for mediating between subscriptions and one-off purchases.

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

#593

Post by [deleted] »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #541
matheusmoreira wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Globally networked computers exist and they trivially render any information abundant at negligible costs So you'll be okay with me photocopying a printed book you published and giving it away for free, because "trivially" is a relative term, and I can certainly "trivially" reproduce your book a million times (compared to 12th century monks copying holy works by hand)? > Attempting to make it work requires the dest…

[deleted]

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

#594

Post by andylynch »

paultopia wrote: post #437
phrom wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you mention Windows and Office. Office is getting worse while moving to a subscription model, while Windows is getting worse by moving towards ads.

Although TBF office and windows have gotten worse with every version at least since the 1990s.

They ruined office with … removing Excel’s 64k row limit, better file format, collaborative editing and better data analysis functions?

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

#595

Post by ryandrake »

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’ve never understood this desire to keep having sortware get updated over and over. Ideally, I want to buy a working version of a software once and never update it again. I want that software to work the same way as it did when I bought it, forever.

I don’t want to worry about waking up one day and finding that, because the company’s chief designer needed to do something to justify his salary, the whole UI of my software was redone and everything was moved around. I don’t want to find that it now runs 2x slower because an update brought unwanted features. It’s like buying a hammer and a week later the handle is shorter and it turned into a hatchet.

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

#596

Post by ahartmetz »

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…

It kinda seems like most software has arrived in the area of diminishing returns, right? Sometimes, the next version even gets worse. So there either aren't so many new useful features to put into the next version and / or the implementation complexity gets overwhelming, so it's only possible to add new useful features with disproportionate effort...

It's disappointing - is what we have really all that is possible...? I actually don't think so, but what will improve the situation? Some kind of AI thing? With my FOSS desktop software background, I think the disappearance of "applications" in favor of a more integrated system also holds some promise. Without companies, there is no need to have marketable distinct pieces of software.

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

#597

Post by fragmede »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #592
FearlessNebula wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A loan from the bank is very different than a service or subscription with the manufacturer to me

On that note, perhaps banks should be the middlemen between companies seeking recurring revenue and people seeking one-off purchases? Have the company charge $X, the bank turns that into $X/24 + interest - this already exists, but it's too tied into the credit system. Perhaps there's a space for innovation there, to make a product specialized for mediating between subscriptions and one-off purchases.

That's all of finance, translating from one to the other. At the consumer level, Klarna seems to offer to go from lump sum to subscription. Or just using a credit card, really.

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

#598

Post by scaradim »

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…

By these days, what is worth "owning"? What do assure yourself that you "own" instead of having a subscription of?

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

#599

Post by 314 »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #520
lozenge wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen any improvement in Spotify in years. Still can't organise songs in any meaningful way, can't rate songs, playlists suck, shuffle is broken, and they keep pushing podcast content when I never listen to podcasts. 1Password also used to sync to Dropbox for free and even had an HTML version that could serve from Dropbox.

Shuffle is not broken. It is algorithmic and tries to feed you songs you might want to listen to but Spotify doesn’t need to pay for (that much).

Shuffle is very broken as it does nit perform a shuffle. Instead it performs random selection with replacement. It is much worse but the devs do not care and insist their way is "right".

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

#600

Post by DavideNL »

Unpopular opinion probably, but the move to subscriptions 'backfired' on me;

Being a software developer myself in the past, I used to spend quite some money on all kinds of software. But since about 2 years i started a 'zero subscription' policy. I now only have subs for video and music streaming, that's it.

Since most companies don't really offer a (sane) 'single purchase/upgrade once in a while' pricing model anymore, i simply use (often less optimal) open source alternatives.

When making single purchases, you could always decide whether or not an upgrade was worth it (compared to the new features software gained.) With subscriptions however, this all becomes *vague*. It's unclear what exactly changed. Often you see tacked-on cloud services, or "under the hood optimizations" and things like that which are supposed to justify the costs. I'm okay with paying for software, but it's obvious many companies are being way too greedy.

PS. I love the subscription model of the "Due" app [1] (not affiliated.) You pay once, keep all the features *forever*, and can optionally re-subscribe yearly for *new* updates/features. This seems like a fair purchase model! And i happily pay for it (if, significant new features are added.)

[1] https://dueapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053244591-Wh...

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