Pirating and 'illegal' copies of software is not what's impacting your bottom line.
A world where people pay for software
241–250 of 543 posts
Re: A world where people pay for software
#242By "people" are you excluding organizations such as governments, corporations etc?
> By "people" are you excluding organizations such as governments, corporations etc?
If you mean "people" as in "A world where people pay for software", then no.
I think companies, especially software companies, would like to subscribe in this system if it gets big because if they have dependencies that require subscriptions, they probably don't want anything to get in the way for their employees.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#243Earlier 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…
Even when customers run software on their own machines, you have to deal with bugs that only occur in rare occasions because your giant user base finds them all. Plus now you’re running in unknowable environments that you have to debug via telephone (the object or the children’s game or both).
Re: A world where people pay for software
#244Earlier 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…
> Another benefit of software that doesn't change every week is you can charge one time for it rather than these awful subscription pricing that most software are switching to. How do you pay developers to continuously fix bugs, provide security updates and update their software when the underlying hardware and operating system changes?
> How do you pay developers to continuously fix bugs, provide security updates and update their software when the underlying hardware and operating system changes?
Have we really strayed so far that everyone's forgotten how this is done? Security fixes and serious bug fixes should always be free (At least going back N-1. You price that work into the sale price to begin with), and you get ongoing revenue by selling new versions.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#245Earlier 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…
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.
An important philosophical observation is that in a world of 7 billion people, “miracles” are happening to thousands of people every day.
I’m software we deal more with curses than miracles. Those happen every day too.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
otherwise it'll become obsolete within couple of years. At the very least it must be patched up with newly discovered security threats. Only if it talks to the internet. I have plenty of software I downloaded over a decade ago that has no internet access and runs perfectly fine on Windows 11. Much of it is even older than that. Just stop trying to cram social media integration into your label-making program and it ge…
> only if it talks to the internet So.... Most software. Agreed
Probably depends on the user, honestly. Most of the software I use doesn't need to talk to the internet. A lot of it wants to, but that's a different thing.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#247Software 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 blow…
I mean, sure, this is what all the business books, MBAs have been saying since 60s. However, since then we have come to learn a lot about software. The most important of which is that software, just like physical products, needs maintenance. The world is constantly changing and evolving, and software has to keep up otherwise it'll become obsolete within couple of years. At the very least it must be patched up with ne…
The problem then isn't that people refuse to pay for software, but that it needs permanent maintenance. Feels like a lot of busy-work.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, sure, this is what all the business books, MBAs have been saying since 60s. However, since then we have come to learn a lot about software. The most important of which is that software, just like physical products, needs maintenance. The world is constantly changing and evolving, and software has to keep up otherwise it'll become obsolete within couple of years. At the very least it must be patched up with ne…
If your software need security maintainance it mostly has a failed architecture from the get go. Like 9/10 apps need no internet connectivity at all, unless they are spyware of course, which most commercial apps are nowadays.
"If your software need security maintainance it mostly has a failed architecture from the get go."
There are plenty of open source libraries, that many software developers used in their applications, that have had to have security updates. No software will be 100% secure.
"Like 9/10 apps need no internet connectivity at all"
This might have been true 10 years ago. Almost all apps people want need internet connectivity.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Software has expectations that it can and should be changed after purchase through updates/patches/upgrades/saas products. That creates an ongoing cost a physical product doesn't have. Nowadays businesses use this to create a constant revenue stream from what used to be a single purchase. It's not to service the product, its to continue to soak money from the people who do end up spending on it. Aside from security…
> I have no incentive to pay more than I have to. You have to pay their recurring revenue if you want them to stay in business and keep the lights on so you can use their product. That's the hard reality. If you run your own server and fix your own bugs and etc. (which is feasible for many here, I'm not saying it's a bad option) then you can "pay no more than you have to".
> You have to pay their recurring revenue if you want them to stay in business and keep the lights on so you can use their product.
It's not my problem that they've settled on a revenue model that isn't in line with what I'm prepared to do.
Re: A world where people pay for software
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel it's the opposite. The incentive is to lock you in and provide as little value as possible for as much money as possible. Get you hooked, take your data hostage, and then jack up the price as much as possible while delivering little to no additional functionality. Bugs? who cares. Broken functionality? No big deal. You are locked in baby!
I don't think this is connected with reality. Most companies don't have such strong lock-in, and those that do often have extremely valuable products.
I dunno, this describes my reality pretty accurately. Apple, Figma, and Adobe all try to lock you in with cloud storage and proprietary storage formats: the more you invest in their products, the more you'd lose by not paying them. I used to run some websites off Squarespace, and there's no way to export them and move somewhere else, so you end up paying ~$200 a year to host a static web page, else recreate it from scratch. Gmail has me locked in by having all my emails from the last twenty years. Slack owns my conversation history with my friends. And so on...
> those that do often have extremely valuable products.
I agree with that. All those products above are valuable and useful to me. But, the price is not commensurate with the value of the product alone. The price only makes sense when you add both the value I get from using the product and the pain I would experience by not using the product anymore. The product developers work hard not only to make the product useful, but also to punish you if you leave. That's the gross part.