31–40 of 329 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, having this plus using something like Confluence for internal documents is quite appealing.
If you're willing to pay for a license, why not donate to the document foundation instead? This way you get a great office suite (Libreoffice) and every one gets it too. A win-win situation?
At this point it seems like the capital markets have long past moved from symbiosis with the productive economy into parasitism and are now accelerating their killing of the host.
I’m running a super simple translation management system where people can manage, host, auto-translate their translation files. How I supposed to run my app without subscriptions? In last 30 days, I transferred over 280 GB of translation data from my service to end-users around the word. Should I tell DeepL, Google and AWS that they should offer me their services for free or what? EDIT: I apologize if this sounds too…
Use tokens instead of subscriptions.
Even if I end up paying the same on average this feels a whole lot better.
There are just too many services out there that wants me to subscribe, and everytime it feels like they are trying to fleece me.
I am old enough to understand that not everything can be free (even if many of my most used tools are), but in way to many cases the thinking seems to be to get me to try a subscription and hope that I forget it.
(I've never ever had anyone pop a notification to tell me that I haven't used my subscription lately, maybe I'd like to puse it? If that was the norm I'd maybe be less annoyed at subscriptions.)
This sort of began when we all got the impression that software should be free, or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. Given that developers need to be paid, and resources cost money, there needs to be a way to rectify that gap between the consumer and maintainer. At one point we did so by paying for an initial version of software, and then paying for updates. Now that we don’t do that, but…
To take IntelliJ as an example, I can't think of an improvement since 2018 that I really would pay for. Largely enabling that is why they moved to the subscription process because people like me would use IntelliJ 18 for five or so years then update for OS support or whatever. €100/yr is way more than I used to pay for intelliJ, €240/yr is way more than I used to pay for Photoshop, etc. because SaaS conversions generally involved splitting the old upfront price as if customers were on a 2 year upgrade cycle rather than 5.
As for security updates, these feel like general hygiene, e.g. if someone's selling a physical electronic product here they need to keep it from manufacturer defects for two years. If my headphones have a bug where they catch fire the manufacturer needs to eat the cost and recall and fix/replace/refund them. Even if it does wipe out their margin from the upfront €100 cost. Similarly if commercial software lets someone own my computer with log message, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect recent software to be fixed.
Obviously tangential to the main point here, but one thing I'm grateful for is my bank (Monzo) allowing me to set up virtual cards. I no longer have any anxiety about speculative subscriptions because I can unilaterally cancel anything.
Some services will block & close your account, but some will continue to accumulate the debt to a point where it's high enough to sell to debt collectors.
The real world today is increasingly run by subscription humans, or “employees.” They are lazy, business-hostile, and rent extracting.
My most recent experience is John and Amy and Sam, completely do-nothing, scam people who command ridiculous amounts of salary with no easy way to fire them or unsubscribe.
What has the world come to, where labor has been appropriated and we are left paying rents every month to these business-hostile humans!
Why can we not force them to create software for us, for free?
/s
This sort of began when we all got the impression that software should be free, or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. Given that developers need to be paid, and resources cost money, there needs to be a way to rectify that gap between the consumer and maintainer. At one point we did so by paying for an initial version of software, and then paying for updates. Now that we don’t do that, but…
Before the App Store, it wasn’t easy to update software, so it was straightforward to lock updates behind paid upgrades.
> now trying to trick people to use One Drive more
A lot of software are now deliberately blurring the line between local storage and cloud storage, not just Office. When I choose to save a file, I expect to save it locally to my hard disk, in a file that I can find and manipulate, and keep secure. More and more, software is nudging users to save their files in “the cloud.” Non-techie users don’t understand the implication of this: they are uploading their private data to the Internet!
Whenever I read an article about a creeper hacking so-and-so’s cloud storage to download their nude images, I wonder if the victim had any idea they were inadvertently posting their private files to the Internet.
iCloud is one of the worst offenders because it is so seamless and invisible. Apple urges iCloud usage constantly, and once you turn it on, the mechanism to de-iCloud yourself is buried in settings.
Software more and more are hiding the fact that they are either saving your files on the Internet or mirroring copies on the Internet, and this is a terrible trend for user privacy and keeping control of their data.
However, I strongly believe selling software with a one-time fee was the problem in the first place. An ongoing service requires ongoing efforts to keep it stable, secure and modern. Just like you pay for housing on a monthly, recurring basis. It's the same with software.
btw: the oldest subscription models are insurances. No one is complaining about them.
If you use a tool for one month, you pay a small amount, if you use it every month for years you pay more. In the old world, if you wanted to use purchase-once software just once, then you had to pay far more upfront.
It aligns incentives too: developers are strongly incentivized to keep existing users happy, rather than ignoring them and constantly chasing the next new sale.
I do think there's a financial/UX problem with subscriptions though, and a lot of shady players trying to abuse that. Really, imo banks need to provide subscription management services as a standard feature. They already know what continual billing is currently linked to your card - they should let you block renewing charges by vendor from your account directly. That'd give you complete control and visibility into all your subscriptions in one place, whether the vendor likes it or not.