Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A world where people pay for software

1sub.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 543 posts

Re: A world where people pay for software

#21

Post by gizmo »

Software has no marginal cost. You can make something that's used by untold millions of people. Even if many people pirate enough people won't for you to recoup your development cost and then some.

Software is easier to produce, sell, and distribute than any physical product. You don't have to worry about warehouses filled with unsold inventory. You don't have to worry about quality control and returns. It still blows my mind how much easier it is to run a business that deals with bytes instead of atoms. The OP talks about software having no copy protection, but Amazon sells DVD players and cordless drills for $30. Imagine for a second how hard it is to compete with that. Competing with Google or Microsoft or some startup is a walk in the park in comparison.

In software the hard part is making an excellent product. And let's face it, that's where most people fail. It has nothing to do with monetization.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#22

Post by ochoseis »

samsquire wrote: post #14

This is timely, I recently commented about paying for software [0], professional software is very expensive, but it's very expensive to create. There's thankless work such as programming language development, operating systems (Linux), databases and Linux distributions that are profoundly valuable. Even just wrangling them from a devops perspective is painful though. I've never paid for any of the work that went into…

> I've never paid for any of the work that went into Ubuntu, Python or Java (I use Corretto) or MySQL or C.

You’ve almost certainly paid for them, just not directly. Some share of the cost in the supply chain that delivers you goods and services will inevitably end up with the large enterprises who sponsor or develop those projects.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#23

Post by api »

Otek wrote: post #19

I know people hate Subscriptions but honestly I quite like them. I can pay for one month usually not very high price to use software when I need it. Problem is to be solved by developers, they should give more often option to buy lifetime license, or allow you to use software for lifetime after you payed for 1 year of subscription (without updates). It’s just not profitable enough I believe. Maybe we will have approp…

I don't mind subscriptions if they deliver consistent value and if I can cancel them easily when I want.

A lot of hatred of subscriptions comes from hard-to-cancel dark patterns that should be illegal.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#24

Post by robalni »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #18

There does need to be some way for ordinary users to pay something to somewhere in a single convenient way, voluntarily and in voluntary amounts, that somehow ends up being pooled and distributed to or otherwise benefitting all the 37,000 developers and projects whos free work they use all day every day. This isn't it. I donate a little to the EFF, monthly automatic, and a few other things irregularly as I feel parti…

This is compatible with that.

One such service that distributes payments could sell subscriptions in this system. That's one of the ideas I have had all the time with this project but I guess I forgot to write down; payment distributers should be one of those you can subscribe to.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#25

Post by robalni »

a254613e wrote: post #9

Besides being sick of subscriptions for every small thing, I'm not sure I understand the premise here: "Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services." So users won't pay a one-time fee, but instead they will pay a subscription to get that one software they need? They won't "find the software somewhere else" if it's behind a sub…

The thing is that this solution scales better. If you had to pay all developers individually, that would not be worth it but with my solution, you have to pay only one.

Also, it doesn't have to be a subscription. The payment is 100% up to the developers that you pay, so they could sell a one time payment and register a lifetime subscription in this system for that.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#26

Post by jovial_cavalier »

a254613e wrote: post #9

Besides being sick of subscriptions for every small thing, I'm not sure I understand the premise here: "Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services." So users won't pay a one-time fee, but instead they will pay a subscription to get that one software they need? They won't "find the software somewhere else" if it's behind a sub…

If I understand correctly, you are not getting one piece of software. You get access to everything in their library, like a spotify subscription. You also choose which developer gets your $5 or whatever, so you retain the meritocratic infrastructure that a traditional marketplace provides.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#27

Post by playingalong »

elemos wrote: post #15
kykeonaut wrote: post #8

I am of the idea that software should be free, but software development should be for profit.

How does this work?

Not OP, but I think they want the software to be FLOSS, but if you want some feature/change you pay (the maintainers) to have it done.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#28

Post by chadash »

The link doesn’t talk about the SAAS model, which is probably the most profitable (and ubiquitous) one these days.

I know people like to rail against it, but I actually like the SAAS model. It keeps incentives aligned. It used to be that I might shell out $200 for a piece of productivity software. Now, I might pay $10 a month instead. The thing is that under the old model, a company was incentivized by make a sale but retention didn’t matter. Now, a sale is almost worthless, but retention is very valuable. Yes, over time I will pay much more with SAAS, but I also have companies that are incentivized to keep the software working. It doesn’t matter that I have a perpetual license on accounting software I bought in 2005… it no longer functions with my operating system anyway. SAAS helps solve this problem.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#29

Post by abmackenzie »

I'm a bit confused - you subscribe to one developer, and then get the benefit of being subscribed to all?

What's the incentive for a developer to sign up to this then, if they don't get a share of your subscription when you use their service? Isn't this a bit like asking Disney+ to give all Netflix subscribers access with no compensation?

Re: A world where people pay for software

#30

Post by robalni »

spuz wrote: post #6
robalni wrote: post #2

This is my project, so if you have questions, I can answer them in this thread.

The whole website is very confusing. Why would a user want to subscribe to only one developer? Why does subscribing to one developer give access to all developers? Why not put yourself in the middle and offer a subscription to "1Sub.dev" and give users the same benefits? What does it mean to "give access to downloads and other resources"? What kind of downloads and resources? Can you give some examples of services th…

> Why would a user want to subscribe to only one developer?

Subscribing to one is easier than subscribing to many. There is less friction and the user gets more for that subscription.

> Why does subscribing to one developer give access to all developers?

All developers (and everyone else) can add subscription checks to whatever they like that will let only subscribers pass.

> Why not put yourself in the middle and offer a subscription to "1Sub.dev" and give users the same benefits?

Then they would all have to pay me. I don't want that. Someone could have something against paying me. Maybe the payment methods I offer doesn't work for someone. Distributing payments seems like the only right thing to do.

> What does it mean to "give access to downloads and other resources"? What kind of downloads and resources?

It could be anything. Here is an example of a paywall for this comments page that will only let subscribers follow the link:

    https://1sub.dev/link?u=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id%3D&s=p_GonuAYEe0&k=&n=hK5ZOXymlHi5s2Es&a=a.18
> Can you give some examples of services that exist that you think don't work well enough?

I don't know what kind of services you mean.

Post reply on HN