Live data from Hacker News

Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

thebaffler.com

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#21

To me, Obsidian is a perfect example of how to get SaaS-revenue without making the user captive: All data is stored in an accessible form on the user hardware, and what you pay for is sync. X-user kepano (who is a/the creator of Obsidian) has some nice insights on this _file over app_ philosophy.

> (who is a/the creator of Obsidian)

No. He is the current CEO, an excellent communicator and definitely the right person for the job, but he wasn't there in the beginning and nothing meaningfully changed about Obsidian's philosophy since for it to be attributed solely to him.

I don't disagree with him on anything in particular, it just feels bad to see the two equated. Original devs wanted to spend their time on actually making the thing, so they hired a CEO. They even picked from the community, kepano was the developer of the most popular Obsidian theme well before he got hired, but he is absolutely not the creator of Obsidian. When he joined, Obsidian already existed.

He's also not the only community hire either, there's at least one or two more people that started as plugin developers before they got hired.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally says it at the bottom for me; from the start; maybe elsewhere it’s another number or it lies. Point stands no? Article writing about subscriptions wants a subscription.

Interesting; I'm in the US; where are you? Also, mobile/desktop? (It literally doesn't say it on the webpage served to me; don't assume the same version is served to all countries)

EU and mobile; it pops up right away and says 1 article. I tried to view another one and that indeed got me to the payments page.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#23
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting; I'm in the US; where are you? Also, mobile/desktop? (It literally doesn't say it on the webpage served to me; don't assume the same version is served to all countries)

EU and mobile; it pops up right away and says 1 article. I tried to view another one and that indeed got me to the payments page.

Must be due to the GDPR then.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#24
post #11

Lovely; a monthly sub to an article talking about monthly subs. You have to realise I will never, ever, going to pay ‘thebaffler’ and especially an article explaining that everyone wants subscriptions in a site that gives me one article and the rest is a subscription.

More than "one free article"; I checked and TheBaffler seems to allow you read 4 articles(/mth?) before subscription-walling.

[flagged]

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#25

Lovely; a monthly sub to an article talking about monthly subs. You have to realise I will never, ever, going to pay ‘thebaffler’ and especially an article explaining that everyone wants subscriptions in a site that gives me one article and the rest is a subscription.

ungated link: https://archive.md/BQqNk

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#26
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU and mobile; it pops up right away and says 1 article. I tried to view another one and that indeed got me to the payments page.

Must be due to the GDPR then.

Doubt it but people seem to misinterpret gdpr rules all the time.

Americans are especially paranoid about the letter of the law while here we only use the intention. It’s all only about big offenders not some blog no one reads.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#28
post #27

I agree with the author that working on files is preferable, if possible. But SaaS often also solve the hard problem of dissemination, and good luck syncing an excel file with 100 people via Dropbox.

Networked drives have been a thing for ages.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#29

Thoma Bravo the “bridge trolls of enterprise software,” they are domestic terrorists if you ask me... because for the majority of people effected by them, its terrorifying. the way they operate is not in our countries/market best interest, but only the interests of a top few, who frankly include real global terrorists as members of the fund. The US should start to investigate PE, PE is crushing the economy under its…

I've been blaming MBAs for ruining large companies for about 15 years. More and more of them were minted, and true to their word, they really have gotten good at extracting every last dollar out of whatever a company sells. Now that small business owners are watching/listening constantly to small business gurus and hustle gurus, those businesses are screwing customers in ways I didnt see 20 years ago. I keep in conta…

MBAs?! Forget those fools, they don't do shit, an MBA is adult day are for rich kids.

Its PE, nothing else to say and its Thoma Bravo most of all.

Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"

#30
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than "one free article"; I checked and TheBaffler seems to allow you read 4 articles(/mth?) before subscription-walling.

[flagged]

The point was clearly that the site seemed to have different (monthly) free limits for EU/US, and that anonzzzies was served a different page to me. No need to be rude.
Post reply on HN