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A world where people pay for software

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Re: A world where people pay for software

#271

Post by ysavir »

cscheid wrote: post #201
ysavir wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _very different_, when the user's environment is different. And 1) you haven't seen shit if you think you can perfectly control the user's environment. 2) every new user is a chance for the environment to bite you. Can you provide some examples of this? I'd like more info here, because off of the top of my head, I can think of the following counter-examples: 1. This isn't a new problem. User environment has been an…

> It surely has a marginal cost. But is that cost significant, is the question. In particular, significant enough to warrant a recurring payment business model. I think you're assuming more of my answer than what I gave. That's fair given that this is the point of the article, but it's not mine. I'm very specifically only responding to "is there a per-user marginal cost on software?", and my answer is most definitely…

> I think you're assuming more of my answer than what I gave. That's fair given that this is the point of the article, but it's not mine. I'm very specifically only responding to "is there a per-user marginal cost on software?", and my answer is most definitely yes.

Fair, but I feel it's disingenuous to ignore the context the original comment was written in (the context of the article) and try to argue against a specific point in the post as if it was made without that original context. The sentence may have lacked inherent context, but it was supporting the key points the GP was making in response to the article. It wasn't designed to stand alone.

Given, I'm not the author of that post so entirely possible they were intending for it to stand alone, but I think it would still be better to see if that was intent rather than to assume so and antagonize what they were saying.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#272

Post by squid_fm »

chefandy wrote: post #238
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…

But interface updates do meaningfully help many people. Most people in engineering roles think the job is done when the engineering is done, and the maintenance is unnecessary unless it's necessary for stability or security. That's not limited to software, either. The fact is, to the vast majority of non-developer software users, an improved workflow, more intuitive, or yes, even more attractive interface makes more…

Without solid designers most software would be completely unusable to the majority of people.

It is really easy to get caught in the trap that YOU are the end-user, but a couple user interviews will quickly shatter that reality.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#273

Post by MichaelZuo »

singlow wrote: post #117
MichaelZuo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've edited my comment since it appears your the third person confused as to the possibility of using them on older computers.

I think you are confused because the 2003 version of those products had already had as many as 20 years of maintenance, in the form of prior releases upon which they were based. Word was first released in 1983 and Excel in 1985.

The 1985 version of Excel was Mac only. The 2003 version is about as closely related as iOS is to Mac System 7.

If you don't understand Excel's history, it's better to not make such a bizarre claim.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#274

Post by Frafabowa »

swiftcoder wrote: post #260
JohnFen wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ne…

> and you get ongoing revenue by selling new versions This works exactly up until the moment that your software is good enough that most of your userbase stops paying to upgrade. Then you are dead in the water, and the software becomes abandonned by design.

Obviously that's bad for businesses - but it's great for consumers! I think the question that's being asked is if there's some business model out there that delivers what customers want (the ability to just buy a finished product once and have it work decades down the line, like "pass it down to your kids" long) while also delivering profits to shareholders.

There's a reason farmers want the ability to repair their own tractors without having to give John Deere an extra cut, you know.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#275

Post by rifty »

robalni wrote: post #2

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

- What do you expect open source developers to charge at minimum for access to the catalog in order to make this make sense to do at all?

If people subscribe once and access everything, it seems like they'd need to charge a lot to make it a worthwhile co-op to participate in. It feels like the amount they would have to charge would become pretty financially restrictive to access the code and not in the interests of someone who wanted to open source in the first place...

- How does this handle the scenario of a developer disappearing?

Does everyone who had access through that developer continue to have access?

It seems since payment processing is handled by individual developers, no longer would people have to pay for access to the whole catalog. Does this now mean over the long term you are handling an ever increase supply of people with access who do not pay but can transfer their access to others for free?

- How does this handle the scenario of developers with subscribers who are supposed to pay a reoccurring payment but have stopped?

Does the developer have the ability to remove access to the catalog from specific subscribers?

If the developers have the ability to remove subscribers at will, doesn't this disincentivize paying at all because paying gives you no security in your access you just bought? What is your plan to arbitrate this without access to primary payment information to confirm who is right?

- It seems like although decentralized, this approximates to the journal model but for code? Is this your intention?

Re: A world where people pay for software

#276

Post by dcow »

JohnFen wrote: post #249
dcow wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, then you're okay with the consequences of the product not existing when they go out of business.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#277

Post by ChadNauseam »

chromoblob wrote: post #261
cscheid wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet that's what every good engineer did when Spectre came out. Same with the Pentium fdiv bugs, and same with a host of microcode bugs that come up all the time. Not my business to decide what you think is reasonable. That's just what happens in the world, and what (in my view) good engineers sign up for.

The choice is between letting hardware be not finalized and letting that force software to be non-finalizable, and letting software be finalizable and forcing the hardware to be finalized too. I like latter more. Finalized hardware is better by itself as well.

We would all like bug-free hardware, but we won't get it and our job is to write good software in the environment we were given

Re: A world where people pay for software

#278

Post by dcow »

JohnFen wrote: post #237
dcow wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Old, unchanged software is not obsolete. It's mature. Bugfixes only, please. This assumes a waterfall approach to development which implies multiple 6 month to year long development cycles. In reality, a mature stable project can receive monthly updates, and an immature half-working project can be in maintenance mode. Furthermore this may work for software that should be seen and not heard doing its job in the back…

> In reality, a mature stable project can receive monthly updates Software that gets frequent updates isn't "mature and stable" by definition. It's constantly changing.

> Software that gets frequent updates isn't "mature and stable" by definition. It's constantly changing.

That's simply not universally true and it's incredibly naïve to try and assert that it is. Obviously there are examples of immature unstable software that receives monthly updates, but it's not a tautology that monthly updates imply immaturity. You either don't work in software or haven't really thought this through.

Stable means the software run reliably without major issues and mature means it is a solution well adapted to the problem domain and solves a problem with grace, tried and true. Monthly updates might be "integrate support for new technology/service (that didn't exist 6 months ago)" or "support latest changes in macOS 14" or even "fix issue that happens 0.01% of the time". Other software changes and you have to adapt, and no software ships bug free. Being mature and stable means you have the time to work on things that aren't existential for your product/business, like adding convenient support for some sexy new service as a nice value bump or making sure those 0.01% of your users aren't occasionally encountering an annoying or frustrating issue.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#279

Post by zokier »

vishnugupta wrote: post #112
gizmo wrote: post #21

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 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 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 newly discovered security threats.

I feel this is largely being overstated point, or rather that in reality majority of important patches for software is due shoddy quality of it originally rather than external changes. Most security issues are rehashes of common well-known attacks rather than completely novel discoveries. Especially on desktop the platform churn is pretty low, windows happily runs like decades old binaries, and on Linux desktop we have this one major breakage happening that is Wayland but otherwise well-written decades old code is at least source compatible if not binary compatible (although even that is not that far-fetched...).

Re: A world where people pay for software

#280

Post by LegitShady »

dcow wrote: post #276
JohnFen wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, then you're okay with the consequences of the product not existing when they go out of business.

If it was just software they sold it would still exist. It's only a saas and abusive license.verififcation that means if they go out of business they remove all benefits from previously paid amounts, and that's not in my interest either.
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