A world where people pay for software • Hacker News Board

Re: A world where people pay for software

#211

Post by underdeserver » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:20 PM UTC

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…

Maintenance costs are (mostly) not marginal though - it's not more expensive to maintain something if more users are using it.

Take into account maintenance when pricing your software.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#212

Post by chromoblob » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:20 PM UTC

cscheid wrote: post #190

chromoblob wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spectre is a bug in the processor, not in the software. I agree that when you're stuck with unfinalized buggy processors, adding mitigations in software is reasonable. But the processor could be finalized too. When I had a reply I couldn't reply to, I opened the reply separately in a new tab, and there I could reply to it, try this.

> Spectre is a bug in the processor, not in the software. It's a bug in the processor that causes a bug in the software. It's not a bug in your idealized mathematical model, but try telling that to the people who paid you not to leak private keys. I see my job as an engineer to be to create a product that satisfies the user's expectations (which in this case are eminently reasonable). It matters not one bit that I ca…

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

Re: A world where people pay for software

#213

Post by vel0city » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #111

vel0city wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering projects have a finished state? So once they build a road or bridge or dam, nobody needs to touch it again forever? It's finished right, no more work anymore. Even in electronic hardware there's often continuation of design and refinement. Have you never seen a board with a revision number on it?

> It's finished right, no more work anymore. Real-world objects like these wear out. Code doesn't. > Have you never seen a board with a revision number on it? Of course I have. There's a difference though. You can't ship an electronic device that's unfinished with a promise to "fix it later". Yet this is what routinely happens with software these days. Also, if your device serves its purpose well, you'd probably have…

> Real-world objects like these wear out

You just said "engineering". Bridges and roads are engineering as well buddy. And it's not even just the wear, it's the continued refinement and upgrade of these structures which is a constant engineering effort.

> Engineering projects usually have a finished state

This is the statement I'm addressing. And it's just not entirely accurate. Things change, assumptions get proven wrong, there's always a newer and better way to do something, etc.

Sure your widget was probably about as good as you could do at the time you first launched it, but several years later there's better components available. Or maybe a supplier stops making some part you were using. Or a few years later you start getting parts back failing early in their service life and need to make an update. What was once your finished state now isn't.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#214

Post by vel0city » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #102

j1elo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineering is like if a car was built and thus "finished", but the systems it depends on (like roads, and gas stations) changed every N years (with N Imagine the gas stations (operating system) changed the kind of fuel they dispense every few years. No, by no means a car (software) that is fully finished today would be able to continue doing its thing tomorrow , without ongoing updates. This also happens in…

Is there any reason — other than "we're paying our graphic designers full-time salaries so we better get our money's worth" — why OSes have to change so drastically and can't be finished as well, only ever updated to add new APIs for apps and drivers to support new hardware features?

> only ever updated to add new APIs for apps and drivers to support new hardware features

Sounds like it's not "finished" if it needs all these updates.

As for why change the window dressing, the market for style changes over time. Why do car companies change the look of their products? Why does the outside of a cereal box ever change? Do the inside of our houses today look the same as the 80s? The 70s? The 40s?

Are you arguing that Windows and MacOS should continue to look like it's 1.0 release?

Re: A world where people pay for software

#215

Post by dcow » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

LegitShady wrote: post #157

ipaddr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A physical product has limitations. Creating 1,000 car mirrors requires capital, storage, self space to sell. Once the mirrors are created no changes can occur. Any changes requires a new batch. 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. There are tradeoffs and different expect…

>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".

Re: A world where people pay for software

#216

Post by smeyer » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

chadash wrote: post #28

The link doesn’t talk about the SAAS model, which is probably the most profitable (and ubiquitous) one these days. I know people like to rail against it, but I actually like the SAAS model. It keeps incentives aligned. It used to be that I might shell out $200 for a piece of productivity software. Now, I might pay $10 a month instead. The thing is that under the old model, a company was incentivized by make a sale bu…

Were people actually paying $200 for a piece of productivity software, though? I'm no expert but sort of got the impression that a lot of the consumer-facing software currently charging $10 a month used to retail for 2 figures, not 3.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#217

Post by joshstrange » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

NickNaraghi wrote: post #109

jovial_cavalier wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand correctly, you are not getting one piece of software. You get access to everything in their library, like a spotify subscription. You also choose which developer gets your $5 or whatever, so you retain the meritocratic infrastructure that a traditional marketplace provides.

Now that you mention it, the spotify subscription is actually very interesting here. A bundled subscription for all the software you use could make sense (though it would probably by 10-100x the cost of a spotify subscription). However, OP's resource allocation model (each user determines which developer gets their payment) doesn't make sense to me. I think it would be better to prototype multiple resource allocation…

SetApp is pretty much that (for Mac, I don't know if they also do Windows stuff). I've avoided it and instead bought a lot of software available in the bundle because I prefer to own the software when I can and when it makes sense.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#218

Post by jansommer » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

> Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services.

If users can find the software elsewhere, then it must be cheaper or better if they don't want to use yours. If this is about pirating, then it's just a matter of time before they buy, unless the ransom for decrypting their personal files bankrupts them.

Please, no more subscriptions.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#219

Post by paulryanrogers » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

photonbeam wrote: post #181

mrlemke wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I pay my developers to do bug fixes if you've only paid me once? Bug fixes are the user's problem, so why should I have to pay for it?

Because you sold a defective product

Depends on whether the bugs are because of preexisting flaws or because the underlying platform has shifted. No one can predict the future, and even OS vendors who once took backward compatibility seriously may not in the future.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#220

Post by labcomputer » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 4:30 PM UTC

lawn wrote: post #64

nightski wrote: post #37

Earlier 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!

What exactly is the difference from paying up front? There there's even less incentives to fix bugs, fix broken functionality and god forbid new functionality.

The difference is that with upfront payment developers are forced to actually add features that provide more utility. Otherwise customers don’t upgrade. With SAAS you have to keep paying, even with if the software is completely static with no new features or bug fixes.

As for bug fixes, do you think I am more or less likely to recommend your software to my friends if it is full of bugs and you don’t fix them?