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A world where people pay for software

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Re: A world where people pay for software

#181

Post by photonbeam »

mrlemke wrote: post #166
ryandrake wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the very least it must be patched up with newly discovered security threats. I'd say at the very most it needs security updates. Too much software changes just to change. UI redesigns for the sake of redesign, cramming features that nobody wants so a product owner can get promoted, adding telemetry and analytics to chase metrics that no user cares about, adding annoying notifications and popups to juice "engagem…

Why would I pay my developers to do bug fixes if you've only paid me once? Bug fixes are the user's problem, so why should I have to pay for it?

Because you sold a defective product

Re: A world where people pay for software

#182

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

SoftTalker wrote: post #162
ryandrake wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the very least it must be patched up with newly discovered security threats. I'd say at the very most it needs security updates. Too much software changes just to change. UI redesigns for the sake of redesign, cramming features that nobody wants so a product owner can get promoted, adding telemetry and analytics to chase metrics that no user cares about, adding annoying notifications and popups to juice "engagem…

On the other hand, the reality experienced by software companies is that adding features is profitable. Joel Spolsky talks about this in one of his old blog posts[1]: "I can tell you that nothing we have ever done at Fog Creek has increased our revenue more than releasing a new version with more features." It makes sense though, if software companies could make just as much money doing less work, they certainly would…

There's really nothing wrong with new features as long as you understand that there's a certain subset of users who don't want things to change. Maybe it's because people are already trained on the current version, or they don't want to have to upgrade machines just to run the new feature set, or any of a thousand reasons you may not have thought of.

And then there are the "upgrades" that try to force you to pay more.

There was a dev tool that I purchased a couple years ago. Don't remember the name. It was reasonably priced and came with 1 year of support. A bit over a year later I got a notification that they had put out an update, so I downloaded it to take a look, only to find out that it had deleted the version I had bought and my license wouldn't transfer over. If I didn't now buy this new version, not only could I not use it past the trial period, but I'd lost the version I had before.

Yeah, I was pissed. And the company really had trouble understanding why I was so pissed off by this behavior. I did finally find out where I could download the version I had before, but there went my entire workday. And the product that previously I would recommend became something I cautioned people to avoid!

Re: A world where people pay for software

#183

Post by grishka »

steveBK123 wrote: post #164
grishka wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Underlying hardware/OS/firmwares/JVM/etc change. OSes also can be "excellent products". They don't need yearly updates, there's nothing inherent to them that would prevent them from being made perfect, finished and never updated again. The only case when an otherwise perfect OS would truly need to update is when new hardware capabilities require OS-level changes to support. Sometimes it may be beneficial to expose…

> there's nothing inherent to them that would prevent them from being made perfect, finished and never updated again. theres this thing called the internet, to which the OS connects, filled with adversarial actors, so no this is not correct at all

And? How do updates help any of this? Firewalls are a thing. Memory-safe languages are a thing. Unit tests are a thing. Fuzzing is a thing. And it is not an OS's job to protect the user from themselves (i.e. social engineering). If you've installed malware, you deserve the consequences and you will be more careful next time. It's okay for powerful technologies to require a minimum level of education.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#184

Post by chromoblob »

cscheid wrote: post #152
chromoblob wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As N of people → ∞, chances for software to break → finite maximum. And for good enough software you should consider that maximum already regardless of the number of users.

> And for good enough software you should consider that maximum already for any number of users. I don't believe such software exists. (And, to be clear, I'm writing from direct, day-job experience.) EDIT: I take it back. SQLite, cURL. Maybe. EDIT2: I can't reply to the SEL4 response, so here goes. I'm a huge fan of verification tools, but consider the Spectre class of bugs. Verification is always done wrt a mathemat…

Spectre is a bug in the processor, not in the software. I agree that when you're stuck with unfinalized buggy processors, adding mitigations in software is reasonable. But the processor could be finalized too.

When I had a reply I couldn't reply to, I opened the reply separately in a new tab, and there I could reply to it, try this.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#185

Post by steveBK123 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #130
steveBK123 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SaaS from established firms seems to be more durable & maintained. The problem is all the flash in the pan ZIRP VC funded never-profit SaaS startups out there. Hopefully these get shaken out over the next couple years finally. For example, I've used Adobe products for a very long time, and they get a lot of flack. I was an extensive user of Photoshop (PS) and Lightroom (LR) for a long time. However, the old model was…

If I'm buying a lifetime thing, it's an investition. I spent money and got thing that will never get old. As time goes on, I'm getting more things and I need to spend less. If I'm buying a subscription, it's an obligation. I'll have to spend money from now until I die or I'll get reduced QoL. Even if today I have spare $200/month, that might not be the case tomorrow. Maybe I'll get fired. Maybe government turn my cas…

Lifetime thing is a rather large statement, especially with software though isn't it? Most of the pre-subscription model compares were never lifetime purchases. Software that needed paid purchase update every 3-5 years to get OS support / features. No software I used in 1995 will run on my current computers. Even 2005 or 2010 is dubious in some cases.

Content constantly changed delivery mechanisms and people had to buy new media/devices every 5-10 years VHS/Betamax -> Laserdisc -> DVD -> Bluray / HD-DVD -> Bluray 4K Vinyl -> 8 track -> Cassette -> CD

For many things there are cheap/free alternatives or you can opt for the fixed cost up front version.

Paper books/eBooks/CDs/DVDs/MP3s can still be purchased outright. Streaming services have ad supported free tiers. You can go to the library, turn on the radio or tune into over the air TV signal. You can buy an old version of photoshop/lightroom put it on an old computer, and don't expect updates. Etc.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#186

Post by raisedbyninjas »

ysavir wrote: post #159
cscheid wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software has no marginal cost. Maybe you've never experienced the difference between writing software for 1000 people and writing software for 1M people, or (I imagine) 1B. The marginal per-person cost of software is not on shipping. It's on "what kind of weird shit will I now have to do because 1M is a lot of chances for my software to break weirdly, and people have paid for it" > You don't have to worry about qua…

That's applicable to websites, where you have to handle requests from all your users, and more users means more requests to handle. But if we're talking about plain old regular software, something that needs no server to operate, and functions perfectly fine offline, something like, say, Photoshop, how different is the impact on the manufacturer when the software is used by 1k users, 1M users, and 1B users? Yes, havi…

Beyond bugs, scaling your MVP to 1B users will mean expanding your userbase beyond English speaking Americans. This requires upgrades to internationalization, accessibility, possibly compliance with international laws and 3rd party licensing changes per region. Multilingual support staff and international payments processing. With a userbase this large, expect to be sued by people around the world, so you'll need region-specific legal services. Some of these issues just require money and non-technical staff and don't directly impact the user experience aside from diverting resources away from building features and fixing bugs for your original userbase.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#188

Post by Knee_Pain »

ativzzz wrote: post #137
Knee_Pain wrote: post #39

I 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…

A former company I worked for started having a larger Indian userbase. We experimented with supporting them more and it would be similar to what you said - significantly lower prices for them. We chose to mostly ignore the Indian userbase and let them use the product as is without catering to them The reality is that just because someone pays less doesn't mean they cost less to support. And then, if you support a lar…

you can make people pay 10 cents a month for the software but the support is a separate subscription

Re: A world where people pay for software

#189

Post by Vox_Leone »

dboreham wrote: post #131
MichaelZuo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people are using copies of Word, Powerpoint, and Excel 2003 just fine, which received literally zero 'maintenance' for at least a decade or more depending on personal preferences. For most software that can be sold in a box, without an attached cloud service, this approach works. EDIT: Also some fraction would be using them on computers that literally haven't been upgraded or connected to the internet for a…

> Plenty of people are using copies of Word, Powerpoint, and Excel 2003 just fine Unless they're also using computers and OSes from 2003 (spoiler -- they're not because those OSes wouldn't work with today's internet), those people are benefiting from untold efforts in the meantime to maintain their OS so it has that compatibility with 20 year old user space code.

I have a Pentium 4 machine running Win XP in regular operation since 2003. I use it to create content in CorelDRAW 11 and AutoCAD 2004.

That sweet sensation of being owner of what you paid for comes as a bonus.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#190

Post by cscheid »

chromoblob wrote: post #184
cscheid wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And for good enough software you should consider that maximum already for any number of users. I don't believe such software exists. (And, to be clear, I'm writing from direct, day-job experience.) EDIT: I take it back. SQLite, cURL. Maybe. EDIT2: I can't reply to the SEL4 response, so here goes. I'm a huge fan of verification tools, but consider the Spectre class of bugs. Verification is always done wrt a mathemat…

Spectre is a bug in the processor, not in the software. I agree that when you're stuck with unfinalized buggy processors, adding mitigations in software is reasonable. But the processor could be finalized too. When I had a reply I couldn't reply to, I opened the reply separately in a new tab, and there I could reply to it, try this.

> Spectre is a bug in the processor, not in the software.

It's a bug in the processor that causes a bug in the software. It's not a bug in your idealized mathematical model, but try telling that to the people who paid you not to leak private keys.

I see my job as an engineer to be to create a product that satisfies the user's expectations (which in this case are eminently reasonable). It matters not one bit that I can point the finger to the chipmakers. I'm still selling something that I now learned doesn't do what I said it would. It's still on me to fix it the best I can. If I care about the product quality, that is.

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