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Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

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Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#301

Post by asaddhamani »

dcminter wrote: post #115
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #78

This is not a wholly black and white world, though. Consider jetbrains: you have a subscription, true, but once you cancel you can still download and use whatever was the latest version released during your paid period. Uou get a perpetual license for it. Seems fair if you accept the fact your IDE no longer “moves fast” along with the ecosystem that seems to have a cult of perpetual churn. Some can afford it, some ca…

> once you cancel you can still download and use whatever was the latest version released during your paid period I think it's actually the version that you started your paid period with, so usually a slightly older version. I think this is fair though. Edit: It depends. See: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...

When you cancel, the fallback license is for the version that was latest 12 months ago.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#302

Post by DarylZero »

doctor_eval wrote: post #295
DarylZero wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newer versions of OSes aren't supposed to break compatibility, and in fact they really don't. The really old programs run in emulators. This is how I play 1980s video games. I highly recommend Mario Brothers (not "Super") from 1983. Still works.

But has it worked continuously on contemporary platforms for the entire period of its existence? I reckon there were many years between the retirement of the original platform and your ability to emulate that platform. The point is that software should remain usable, but in your example that hasn’t been the case.

No, but that's because it's from 1983. It's only modern machines that have this awesome excess of power.

Apple did Rosetta in 2006. That proves this approach has been _commercially_ viable on top-end machines for at least 15 years. Not 39 years!

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#303

Post by coldtea »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #195
coldtea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Blame the victim? We din't get any impression, as we don't set the prices. The companies set those prices. For example Adobe customers never got or set any impression that "software should be free/low price". They paid 100s to 1000s of dollars for each update or package r…

> Blame the victim? I don't think it makes sense to call anyone making an informed decision to overpay for a service a victim. If you don't think the deal is reasonable, then don't accept the deal and use something else. The exception being profiteering in the case of a shortage, but I don't think this is the case. There is no software shortage being taken advantage of.

>I don't think it makes sense to call anyone making an informed decision to overpay for a service a victim.

No, those I'm calling victims are people like me, who would like to buy the update and own it, but are instead forced in a subscription - which if they ever have to stop paying for whatever reason (e.g. out of a job, medical bills, etc) they lose their access to the programs they've been paying for month over month for years.

A music program called Reason is a good example of the scumbuggery involved. It used to have $129 annual updates - which were already overpriced, as they had minimal changes, and more professional competitors like Steinberg with much bigger update deltas (new features, work involved, etc) charged much less for their annual updates.

Now, they switched to subscription, for $20/month ($240/year) where they give access to some extra plugins to entice you. But to force the user's hands (since they still offer the paid annual updates), they also bumped the annual update price to $200/year (without the extra plugins, the regular, already-overpriced-at-129 update).

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#304

Post by coldtea »

warrenm wrote: post #226
coldtea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Blame the victim? We din't get any impression, as we don't set the prices. The companies set those prices. For example Adobe customers never got or set any impression that "software should be free/low price". They paid 100s to 1000s of dollars for each update or package r…

>we want reasonably priced products we own after we buy That has [effectively] never been the case You don't "own" software once you buy it You own a license to use it (with some level of constraints around how/when/where you use it) Even if that license happens to let you use it as much as you want anywhere you want, that doesn't mean it will continue to work "forever" So many people don't understand that digital pr…

>You own a license to use it (with some level of constraints around how/when/where you use it)

That's neither here, nor there. I didn't argue we buy and then own software like a shoe or a tire. People bought software before and we know the semantic and legal differences between it and buying physical products.

But that's irrelevant, the discussion is about software-bought (with the license and all it entails) vs software subscription -- not about the semantics of bought software vs bought physical stuff.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#305

Post by coldtea »

drewcoo wrote: post #253
coldtea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Blame the victim? We din't get any impression, as we don't set the prices. The companies set those prices. For example Adobe customers never got or set any impression that "software should be free/low price". They paid 100s to 1000s of dollars for each update or package r…

I, mostly, don't want products. I want to be able to communicate or veg out with a movie or have CI run. I generally don't care about the how. I just want the results. And I want to not think about it much beyond that. I, like everyone else, assume that's what everyone wants. My scribble on the HN wall that you're reading right now involved thinking about something more than I thought it deserved.

>My scribble on the HN wall that you're reading right now involved thinking about something more than I thought it deserved.

Well, you might not care or what to think about the market, but the market cares and thinks about you.

And if you don't pay attention, you can easily get taken for a sucker, overcharged, forced in abusive rent-seeking relationships and so on...

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#306

Post by coldtea »

bestnameever wrote: post #207
coldtea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Blame the victim? We din't get any impression, as we don't set the prices. The companies set those prices. For example Adobe customers never got or set any impression that "software should be free/low price". They paid 100s to 1000s of dollars for each update or package r…

> We don't want "super cheap products", we want reasonably priced products we own after we buy. I'd fully expect someone to provide this if there is a market for it.

That's so quaint, it's like it's 1950s, and people still believe there's a free market and open competition...

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#307

Post by beowulfey »

chii wrote: post #71
beowulfey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would still gladly pay for updates—nobody expected to get updates for free, we always did it that way before. My impression is that the AppStore model, with the updates provided for free (for bug fixes, etc) is what began that shift to subscriptions. Before the App Store, it wasn’t easy to update software, so it was straightforward to lock updates behind paid upgrades.

> nobody expected to get updates for free if there's a security vulnerability, i'm sure you'd expect the update to be free.

I mean, I remember the days when I didn’t expect free updates. That’s my whole point.

I don’t know if I can explain why. Maybe security wasn’t as big of a deal.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#308

Post by hackerfromthefu »

tallanvor wrote: post #94
Kuinox wrote: post #5

> Microsoft has used its dominant position to charge for MS Office in perpetuity You can still buy a definitive, noncloud, without subscription of MS Office, and they still release it (there is a 2021 edition).

Yeah, I don't understand their claim around Microsoft either. They're still offering perpetual licenses, and sure, they're integrating OneDrive a lot, but you can still save a document wherever you want on your computer and last I checked, Save As works the same way it always has.

The office Save As dialogs have been butchered to make saving to your local drives take many more clicks off the primary path. It's dark patterns ui to force people to cloud and azure rather than defaulting to local storage.

It's been this way for at least a few years and I think actually near half a dozen.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#310

Post by vektor888 »

In the past I developed a mobile app that was standalone and users had to pay only once.

Users then started asking extra features and down voted my app when I said I didn't want to implement them.

When the app lost its popularity and was making barely no money, I realized that I was working for free. My user base paid for a product having a well defined set of features and kept asking for more, for free.

Moreover, think about a service that needs to rely on an online backend, for instance to synchronize app data between devices, how are you supposed to do that with a single payment business model?

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