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A world where people pay for software

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Re: A world where people pay for software

#81

Post by jehb »

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…

This has not been my experience at all with SaaS.

I find SaaS products, including ones I have paid for, disappear at a much greater rate than the rate at which the desktop tools they replaced stop working.

There's also next to nothing I can do as an end user when they do disappear. If I'm very lucky, I get a limited window to be able to export a portion of my data. But we've eroded data formats to the point where even if I can export my data, there might be nothing to plug it into. What good is a CSV, even, when what I need is a tool that processes the data in the CSV? There's no option for me to keep an old machine or a VM around and self-support on a discontinued piece of SaaS.

That's to say nothing of the price hikes. $10 a month today becomes $14.99 next month, $17.99 in a year, and before you know it the proprietary system you've locked yourself into now costs five times what you originally paid. Sure, they might add some more features, but since it's SaaS, in many cases you have no choice to seek out a different vendor to provide the same feature, as again, your data is locked up in a format you can't easily extract and work with elsewhere.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#82

Post by davidw »

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…

Software is mostly a non-rivalrous good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics) although it becomes a little bit more that way when it's hosted, rather than distributed via downloads or something, depending on the load it puts on a server.

It is excludable, but more so with SaaS type things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability

Re: A world where people pay for software

#83

Post by steveBK123 »

grishka wrote: post #70
inglor_cz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making an excellent product is hard, but what is really hard, is maintaining it for years and decades afterwards. Maintenance, addition of new functionality, bugfixing, porting to other platforms etc. takes easily 10x-50x time than the initial release, and eats the vast majority of the developers' time and energy. This is where "not being paid for your work" translates into abandoned projects.

An excellent product doesn't need maintenance if it doesn't rely on any online services. Once it's done, it's done. It does everything it needs and nothing it doesn't need. Engineering projects usually have a finished state. Software engineering is no different, no matter how much the industry wants you to believe otherwise.

Completely incorrect.

Underlying hardware/OS/firmwares/JVM/etc change.

Dependencies break.

Security updates.

Etc.

Engineering projects usually hand off maintenance to their owner. Your house/car need maintenance. Your cities roads/bridges/tunnels need maintenance.

The difference with software is that maintenance is done by the producers as they own the code.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#84

Post by robalni »

spuz wrote: post #48
robalni wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would a user want to subscribe to only one developer? Subscribing to one is easier than subscribing to many. There is less friction and the user gets more for that subscription. > Why does subscribing to one developer give access to all developers? All developers (and everyone else) can add subscription checks to whatever they like that will let only subscribers pass. > Why not put yourself in the middle and of…

I'm very confused about how the distributed payment system would work. How much would a subscription cost for a user and how much would a developer see of that? > I don't know what kind of services you mean. You write on your website: "Why this is better than the alternatives" If you could give examples of the alternatives that you think don't work then it might be helpful to see how your service differs from those.

> I'm very confused about how the distributed payment system would work. How much would a subscription cost for a user and how much would a developer see of that?

Developers could sell subscriptions for any price they want. They have a limited number of subscriptions they can sell so there is a supply/demand that influences the price. Users buy directly from the developers so they would get 100% of the money (minus possible transaction fees depending on payment method).

> If you could give examples of the alternatives that you think don't work then it might be helpful to see how your service differs from those.

The alternatives are mainly the ones listed on the page above: buying things from developers in the usual way and donating. There are also other systems that work in a more centralized way where you pay the system that then distributes the money to the creators and this system differs from all of those in that it doesn't handle any money.

If you want an example, there is liberapay.com that seems to be donations with centralized payments. My system tries to be better than that because:

- Payments are less voluntary because you get access to stuff when you pay.

- Payments are decentralized so there can be more freedom of choice in how you pay.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#85

Post by inglor_cz »

grishka wrote: post #70
inglor_cz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making an excellent product is hard, but what is really hard, is maintaining it for years and decades afterwards. Maintenance, addition of new functionality, bugfixing, porting to other platforms etc. takes easily 10x-50x time than the initial release, and eats the vast majority of the developers' time and energy. This is where "not being paid for your work" translates into abandoned projects.

An excellent product doesn't need maintenance if it doesn't rely on any online services. Once it's done, it's done. It does everything it needs and nothing it doesn't need. Engineering projects usually have a finished state. Software engineering is no different, no matter how much the industry wants you to believe otherwise.

Uh, look at curl. It is an excellent product, no doubt about it (or if you do, I wonder what your standards for excellence are), and yet we are here, at version 8.0, 27 years after its first release.

Edit:

"if it doesn't rely on any online services"

That is a big IF. How many things don't, at least indirectly? (e.g. by relying on HTTPS, which requires TLS, which requires keeping up with current cryptographic standards.)

Re: A world where people pay for software

#86

Post by yread »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #59
masukomi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you think those aren't receiving maintenance you're not paying attention or are ignorant as to how hard it is to keep a complex app compiling as operating systems move forward. Not receiving new features is VERY different from not receiving maintenance. It is wholly implausible to believe that there has been zero energy spent on keeping those codebases working in the past 10 years.

I'm not sure what to say to this... you can just buy an old copy of Office 2003 on eBay, an old Windows XP computer, and boot it up and try it out? You don't have to believe me, I imagine practically every reader on HN has the means to verify this for themselves.

Sure you can do that. But look at the list of 60 vulnerabilities with score 9+ that you're exposing yourself to:

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=...

So you can try it out but don't open any documents, or run it while connected to the net. You'd better also not insert any images. Have fun!

We could also have a post "World where bad people don't try to break your software"

Re: A world where people pay for software

#87

Post by vel0city »

grishka wrote: post #70
inglor_cz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making an excellent product is hard, but what is really hard, is maintaining it for years and decades afterwards. Maintenance, addition of new functionality, bugfixing, porting to other platforms etc. takes easily 10x-50x time than the initial release, and eats the vast majority of the developers' time and energy. This is where "not being paid for your work" translates into abandoned projects.

An excellent product doesn't need maintenance if it doesn't rely on any online services. Once it's done, it's done. It does everything it needs and nothing it doesn't need. Engineering projects usually have a finished state. Software engineering is no different, no matter how much the industry wants you to believe otherwise.

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?

Re: A world where people pay for software

#89

Post by MichaelZuo »

j1elo wrote: post #76
MichaelZuo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what to say to this... you can just buy an old copy of Office 2003 on eBay, an old Windows XP computer, and boot it up and try it out? You don't have to believe me, I imagine practically every reader on HN has the means to verify this for themselves.

That kind of rethoric doesn't fly too far... Your original point was > Plenty of people are using Word, Powerpoint, and Excel 2003 just fine Are you claiming that a reasonable majority (for the sake of discussion) of this plenty of people are using Office 2003 on Windows XP machines ?? I'd doubt it. More like there's plenty of people using old software in modern versions of Windows. The maintenance work, of course, e…

If you also include Windows 2000, Vista, and 7 computers that weren't updated in the last decade, I think that would be a sizeable fraction of all Office 2003 users in 2023.

Whether or not they make up the numerical majority of all extant users is simply irrelevant to the point of 'Plenty of people'. It's easily many, many, thousands.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#90

Post by ozim »

I have a different take on the topic.

People should not pay for software - average Joe should have all kinds of software basically free.

Now you ask "who should pay for development", corporations, companies or foundations where people still could donate but would not have to. Where corporations and companies pay salaries and provide end users with services.

Solo devs should not write and maintain anything without getting paid.

Yes it is "corporate dystopia" but on the other hand when I see all kinds of rants or horror stories from OSS maintainers and companies that don't want to contribute it seems only reasonable way. Corporation/Company/Foundation pay salaries for devs and provide people with software while charging for services like keeping data or any other actual services that can be connected to software they provide or in case of foundations by donations.

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