Strangely this is the same thing that happened to the music business. Maybe we need to start selling merch and going out on tour to make a living!
A world where people pay for software
41–50 of 543 posts
Re: A world where people pay for software
#42I am super confused about the concept. I pay "someone", of my own choosing, and I get access to...what, exactly? "everything"? What is that? What incentive do the developers that I'm not paying have to give me something?
> 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.
I also reject this premise. My evidence being the trillions of dollars spent annually on software and other services.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#43I 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…
Subscriptions just becomes unmanageable when you have to many. I do like your example of some software where you just need it for a month, but I don't think that should be a subscriptions then. That should just be paying for one or two months upfront.
The issue that I have with subscriptions is, as I said, they become unmanageable and they are frequently dishonest, betting on you to forget to cancel them. You do a one year subscription for something, forget to cancel in time, and now you're stuck paying for two years.
Both SaaS and many other type of subscriptions really need to drop the recurring part and just let you "rent" the product. That seems more honest to me.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#44I think the biggest problem is the financial infrastructure. We pay for software almost exclusively through digital means, but the fees are too damn high. Imagine if transaction fees were zero. Imagine if a piece of software you used costed 10 cents per months. Or someone's patreon or github sponsor was 5 cents per month. And then imagine if starting and stopping the subscription was intuitive and super easy with any…
At the same time cost gates are quality gates quite often.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#45I don't get it. I also see other comments not getting it so I don't think it's just me.
Is this like Kindle unlimited where someone pays a single subscription and gets access to all content providers on the platform (in this case content is software), where creators get a proportion of the subscription fee based on how much a user used an app? So e.g. 10$ per month, I use FooReader 90% of the time, so they get 9$.
Idk, even if I am not getting the details, I don't think that any collective approach to app is going to work. Unlike with other industries like movies or music, products in software are very different from each other and is consumed in a variety of ways (library vs end-user app) that have a lot of complicated nuance (in terms of licensing and company goals).
Re: A world where people pay for software
#46I'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?
The difference this is supposed to make is that currently most people don't pay for free software. I don't for example. That is because I don't need to. This system is supposed to make more people pay, which should mean that all developers get more money. Giving access to someone who subscribes to someone else is part of what makes this work and if the developers can accept that, they should all benefit from it.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#47This is my project, so if you have questions, I can answer them in this thread.
So someone can subscribe to a 0.99/month product and use several 19.99/month products?
Re: A world where people pay for software
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 of…
I'm very confused about how the distributed payment system would work. How much would a subscription cost for a user and how much would a developer see of that?
> I don't know what kind of services you mean.
You write on your website: "Why this is better than the alternatives"
If you could give examples of the alternatives that you think don't work then it might be helpful to see how your service differs from those.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#49I am super confused about the concept. I pay "someone", of my own choosing, and I get access to...what, exactly? "everything"? What is that? What incentive do the developers that I'm not paying have to give me something? > 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. I also reject this premise. My evidence being the trillions…
What you get access to is everything that is protected using this site. Anyone can create paywalls. Here is an example of a link that only lets subscribers view this comments page:
https://1sub.dev/link?u=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id%3D&s=p_GonuAYEe0&k=&n=hK5ZOXymlHi5s2Es&a=a.18Re: A world where people pay for software
#50I am of the idea that software should be free, but software development should be for profit.
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