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Write libraries instead of services, where possible

catern.com

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Re: Write libraries instead of services, where possible

#111

Post by pault »

indigochill wrote: post #69
bogdanoff_2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is SaaS really the only viable (or "unicorn") business model? Do people not sell software licenses anymore? (In theory nothing prevents you from making your license require recurring payment as well)

I suspect it's the same reason game devs are hot for streaming. When the code only runs on machines you control, piracy becomes impossible. By contrast, trusting people to respect licenses on code on their computers is how piracy happens. In my opinion this is a feature, not a bug, but the business reason is clear for why all commercial software is moving towards the SaaS model.

How much game piracy happens these days? Since steam became such a good distribution platform and my internet connection got fast I haven’t even thought about pirating a game. AAA titles are expensive, but there aren’t a ton of them released every year, and downloading cracked installers is a huge security risk.

Re: Write libraries instead of services, where possible

#112

Post by eeZah7Ux »

jasode wrote: post #70
ganafagol wrote: post #20

> A service has constant administration costs which are paid by the service provider. A properly designed library instead moves these costs to the users of the library. I agree with the articles point, but this introduction, right there, is why it's not happening. SaaS turns your startup into a unicorn and yourself into a rich person. Or at least that's what you are hoping/aiming for. A library is not going to make y…

>SaaS turns your startup into a unicorn and yourself into a rich person. Or at least that's what you are hoping/aiming for. A library is not going to make you a billionaire. The article's author seems to be making an indirect reference to Moxie Marlinspike (Signal) "ecosystem is moving" essay[0]. If so, Moxie Marlinspike's method for becoming a billionaire by creating non- profit 501(c)(3) organization and providing…

> If so, Moxie Marlinspike's method for becoming a billionaire by creating non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and providing Signal's source code is a very strange way to cash out of a unicorn.

On the contrary:

Step 1: The service is already centralized

Step 2: Make the central service closed source: happening now.

Step 3: A no profit can be turned for-profit or used together with a for-profit (e.g. IKEA)

Signal can become a perfect example of bait-and-switch market capture.

Re: Write libraries instead of services, where possible

#113

Post by bpodgursky »

catern wrote: post #93
bcoates wrote: post #54

I was agreeing until I got to this nonsense: An object in a type-safe language can contain capabilities for resources which it uses to implement its methods, without those capabilities being available to the code calling those methods. Java-style stack inspection can restrict user or library code to deny access at runtime to unauthorized methods. Capability-safe architectures such as CHERI prevent code from accessing…

>none of these actually work and none of the implementations you will find in the wild are anything but snakeoil This is wrong. The foundation of the modern web is safe Javascript implementations. BPF/eBPF is another widespread technology using isolation mechanisms like this. All of these techniques work. As I mentioned in the very next sentence, only the first in that list is common, but that doesn't mean the rest d…

I think you are talking about different things. I have absolutely decompiled obfuscated third-party Java libraries, fiddled with a few variables or method signatures, and recompiled + used them.

JVM security has nothing to do with this.

Re: Write libraries instead of services, where possible

#114

Post by artembugara »

Write libraries AND services, where it makes sense.

I wrote a Python library to scrape google news [0]

We also have it as a service [1]

Want to know why? Because devs who can't pay won't pay. Businesses who can pay will rather pay for a service (API in our case), and not care about maintaining it.

[0] https://github.com/kotartemiy/pygooglenews

[1] https://newscatcherapi.com/google-news-api

Re: Write libraries instead of services, where possible

#115

Post by yabudemada »

kybernetikos wrote: post #81
ganafagol wrote: post #20

> A service has constant administration costs which are paid by the service provider. A properly designed library instead moves these costs to the users of the library. I agree with the articles point, but this introduction, right there, is why it's not happening. SaaS turns your startup into a unicorn and yourself into a rich person. Or at least that's what you are hoping/aiming for. A library is not going to make y…

You're right. The fact that people can make outsize rewards from subscription services are the reason that even small single use tools are now 'services'. I have a piece of software that removes the background from my video feed. It's a subscription, and it regularly phones home. I have a piece of software that lets me visually combine, rotate and reorder pdfs. It's a subscription. Even the simplest things, like a 't…

MS Office is a great example of this because they squeeze money out of folks when it seems the features added are minimal. The only interesting aspect is cloud-collaboration, but that could be P2P instead. I'm willing to wager most folks still use the same subset of office functionality: page layouts and fonts and such have been around for a while; financial formulas rarely change; etc. But yet, they are charged an arm-and-a-leg for the "cloud."

And then there's Amazon with their lambdas—trying to convince people that they should forget how to program and rely on a plethora of beautiful, shiny one-liners.

Re: Write libraries instead of services, where possible

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

ganafagol wrote: post #20

> A service has constant administration costs which are paid by the service provider. A properly designed library instead moves these costs to the users of the library. I agree with the articles point, but this introduction, right there, is why it's not happening. SaaS turns your startup into a unicorn and yourself into a rich person. Or at least that's what you are hoping/aiming for. A library is not going to make y…

> SaaS turns your startup into a unicorn and yourself into a rich person

If the function could be served by a library? Probably not. Because someone else will write the library, and then your high-latency, internet-required, for-pay service will be competing against a free (presuming the library is available that way, which if the first one isn't is still likely eventually), low-latency, offline-capable library.

Re: Write libraries instead of services, where possible

#117

Post by redkoala »

yaomtc wrote: post #104
kybernetikos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. The fact that people can make outsize rewards from subscription services are the reason that even small single use tools are now 'services'. I have a piece of software that removes the background from my video feed. It's a subscription, and it regularly phones home. I have a piece of software that lets me visually combine, rotate and reorder pdfs. It's a subscription. Even the simplest things, like a 't…

> Even the simplest things, like a 'torch' are ad-supported on android these days. This has a built-in feature on every smartphone for years now. These apps are a scam.

App stores should really prevent these type of no value add apps.

Re: Write libraries instead of services, where possible

#120

Post by bcrosby95 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #102
devit wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure there is normal software for those uses, and you can get free/open source apps with no ads from F-Droid for all basic needs (such as a "torch").

Unfortunately, normal software cannot afford the marketing budget a service can (particularly a VC-backed service).

There's gotta be a way to crowd source this. Like a subreddit for people interested in apps/software that isn't subscription based.
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