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A world where people pay for software

1sub.dev

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Re: A world where people pay for software

#331

Post by paulmd »

steveBK123 wrote: post #185
vbezhenar wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

> 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.

For sufficiently valuable software, people will hold back on an older OS to keep using the software.

A lot of high-end film scanners will come with the 68k or PowerPC mac that’s used to run the software, because the alternative would be spending $20-30k for a new one. And industrial systems run on similar models.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#332

Post by pfannkuchen »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #306

Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software an…

One problem is that most necessary projects aren’t fun, and most fun projects aren’t necessary. Does anyone design dishwashers as a hobby, as an easy example? How do you propose we motivate people to do work that isn’t fun? Currently the carrot of higher pay or ownership in a more valuable thing is doing that, so we would need something to replace it if that goes away.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#333

Post by nyanpasu64 »

ajkjk wrote: post #320

My question is: why isn't there yet a thing (or is there?) that works like AWS, but has the UX experience of a smartphone: you can install "apps" on it -- which you pay for hosting / bandwidth -- and it handles integration with all your devices, while leaving you in charge of how they're configured and what happens with the data? Sorta like expanding the mobile phone experience to encompass your whole internet experi…

I want a plug-and-play way to install services like (front-ends) BreezeWiki, Rimgo, Nitter, and Invidious, and (self-hosted) Miniflux, Gitea, a centralized Syncthing node, and an image sync tool (possibly Immich), onto an old laptop I own, without messing with users, groups, AUR builds, upgrading between Postgres versions... like a world where sandstorm.io had taken off. Then access them on any of my devices, like Tailscale but without binding arbitration and a class action waiver...

Re: A world where people pay for software

#334

Post by scarface_74 »

drbawb wrote: post #321
scarface_74 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it good for consumers to have abandoned software that is not compatible and never will be compatible with newer operating systems? Two decades ago, for instance Apple was still selling PPC based Macs.

You emulate the abandonware, old OS and all. She kicked the habit recently, but my sister preferred Word 5.1 for Mac for a long time. That was a 68k program, which she dutifully used _on a PC_ while Apple was busy shipping iOS on ARM and Mac OS on x86. The Centris 610 is very tired, but the software still works. (Well, not the original copy. Those install floppies are very dead. ) Software can be uniquely persistent,…

Well, my wife uses one my 5 user Office 365 subscription licenses on her Mac. I use it on my iPad and phone. My mom uses it on her Windows laptop and her iPad.

We each get 1TB of online storage.

Compare that to the $599 that Office for Mac use to cost and that you could only use on one computer.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#335

Post by AnthonyMouse »

robalni wrote: post #223
andruby wrote: post #199

I don't understand the "economic" model. If I'm a developer and get to chose what to charge, that means I can ask people for $0.01, and they would get access to everything from all developers of this "platform"? The example on [0] where a developer pays credits when they get a subscriber is confusing. Should Devs "top up" somehow? [0] https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works

> If I'm a developer and get to chose what to charge, that means I can ask people for $0.01, and they would get access to everything from all developers of this "platform"? You can do that but you will not make a lot of money that way. The number of subscriptions you can sell is limited so if you sell all of them for $0.01 you will probably wish you had asked for more and when you have sold out, only the more expensi…

> How fast they will get more could depend on the current value of their account, where the value could be calculated from the credits and the number of subscribers they have.

So are you then implicitly setting the price yourself because anyone who doesn't charge enough can't get more credits?

Suppose someone develops an app which takes hardly any effort to make -- it's a hundred lines of code -- but it does something common that everybody needs so if available for $0.01 it would have a hundred million users. Which would gross a million dollars and more than pay for the development of the simple app, so the developer is satisfied with that. But to do that you'd have to let them sell a hundred million subscriptions for $0.01 each.

Now let's go toward the other end of the spectrum. Some app which is specialized and requires a million dollars of developer time but only has a market of 10,000 customers. Those customers would pay $100 each for it, if they had to, but not if they can buy into the system somewhere else for $10 (or $0.01) instead.

In general, who is going to buy a fungible subscription for significantly more than it's available somewhere else? How do you handle the fact that the development cost of a thing isn't proportional to the number of people who use it?

Re: A world where people pay for software

#336

Post by chromoblob »

thfuran wrote: post #304
chromoblob wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The program must not show bugs when run on a hardware with unforeseeable bugs, you call this reasonable?

If you buy a car and the airbags randomly deploy, would you consider it reasonable for the manufacturer to respond "oh, yeah, that'll happen if you drive it on roads rougher than polished stainless steel. You should only be driving on polished roadways"?

If this requirement was known to me before I bought, sure.

I think that this is a bad analogy to hardware, though. Polished steel roads are unreasonable to ask for, but bugless processors are reasonable to ask for.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#337

Post by goplayoutside »

ajkjk wrote: post #320

My question is: why isn't there yet a thing (or is there?) that works like AWS, but has the UX experience of a smartphone: you can install "apps" on it -- which you pay for hosting / bandwidth -- and it handles integration with all your devices, while leaving you in charge of how they're configured and what happens with the data? Sorta like expanding the mobile phone experience to encompass your whole internet experi…

Do you mean something like Cloudron or PikaPods or SandStorm? "Self-hosting as a Service".

Kagi solves the conflict of interest aspect of search engines like Google. (No affiliation, just a satisfied early adopter.)

Re: A world where people pay for software

#338

Post by smolder »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #306

Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software an…

These are the sorts of efficiency improvements that would go a long way towards tackling global warming and environmental destruction, particularly the open design to reduce waste. The question is, how can we get from where we are in terms of an economic and political system to one that supports a healthy commons and maximizes value, like you describe?

Re: A world where people pay for software

#339

Post by derefr »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #306

Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software an…

Do you think there would be very many programmers in such a world?

Personally, I think that a lot of people who right now go into programming "because it's a good career", would instead do things that are equally creative but also capture other things high on the Maslow hierarchy — e.g. fame.

Personally, despite enthusiastically enjoying my programming career and puzzle-oriented problem-solving more generally, I'm still intending to retire early and become a novelist. If I could "thrive regardless of income", I'd do that right now.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#340

Post by smolder »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #332
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #306

Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software an…

One problem is that most necessary projects aren’t fun, and most fun projects aren’t necessary. Does anyone design dishwashers as a hobby, as an easy example? How do you propose we motivate people to do work that isn’t fun? Currently the carrot of higher pay or ownership in a more valuable thing is doing that, so we would need something to replace it if that goes away.

There are potentially other carrots aside from material wealth that can motivate people to do unpleasant work. Currently it takes significant pay to get people to do certain important but thankless jobs. We could thank them. A legacy is important to many people. They may enjoy an immutable commemoration of their work, if they're secure in a material sense.
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