7 ms·

Subscription is the only way to do software

55 points by mobitar 9y ago

jodrellblank 9y ago
consider if Starbucks customers visited the store only once every 10 years to buy a single cup of coffee? How soon do you imagine they’d go out of business? Imagine if one cup of coffee "worked" for ten years, how much you'd care if Starbucks went out of business? Consumers aren't there as a substitute welfare state to provide eternal employment for hungry programmers. Nobody pays a subscription to an author instead of buying a book. "Oh they rewrote chapter one?" It's just a case of holding information hostage in the cloud because you can. [Stallmanning intensifies]
- wccrawford 9y ago
  Indeed. I just unsubscribed from Adobe's online Photoshop offering because I don't use it enough to pay $10/mo every month. Instead, I went looking around and found a great alternative with a set price... And then I decided not to buy that until I actually needed it. Once I needed something for simple image work, I ended up downloading Krita for free and it works just fine. I may still buy the other software, but not until Krita can't do what I need. (To be fair, the other software looks amazing... But so is Photoshop, if you use it daily. Which I don't.)
  - tapatio 9y ago
    You are not the target market.
    - jodrellblank 9y ago
      You say that as if being the target is desirable.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Yeah, this is just a bunch of "why should I charge a little when I can charge a lot?". I don't know, people spent a bunch of man-years making my washing machine, but I don't pay a subscription on it. If the choice is between $120 up-front or $5 a month, maybe it's worth it (e.g. maybe paying $8/mo is better than paying however much for Photoshop+Lightroom), but I have a feeling that this developer is talking about $2 up-front or $5/mo.
  - chrisaycock 9y ago
    > I don't know, people spent a bunch of man-years making my washing machine, but I don't pay a subscription on it. You pay a subscription for the detergent. Hardware is the washing machine; software is the detergent.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Detergent is a consumable, and typically not made by the same company that made the washing machine. Nonsense analogy. Even without a washing machine you'd use soap.
  - probablybroken 9y ago
    In the case of a washing machine, they design the unit to stop functioning in the near future, sell you a limited warranty, and then frequently try to sell you an extended warranty. It's different, but yes, things are dressed up to extract the most they can from a customer.
    - iamatworknow 9y ago
      >they design the unit to stop functioning in the near future I don't believe anything is "designed" to stop functioning. That's just a happy accident that results from cost cutting measures in the manufacturing process.
      - probablybroken 9y ago
        Ok, maybe it's arrived at via an evolutionary process then - with selection being provided by stakeholders. The outcome is however the same.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  > Consumers aren't there as a substitute welfare state to provide eternal employment for hungry programmers. The flip side to this argument is that programmers aren't obligated to continue fixing bugs and adding features to software forever if they aren't being paid. Software subscriptions are the only way I know of to align the incentives properly so that programmers will actually fix things instead of moving on to an entirely new piece of software that they can sell anew and leave the old one to rot, which is a real problem that has plagued small dev shops forever.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Yes. Historically, it was very common for the stock response for bugs to be "It's fixed in the next version." There was a very strong incentive for companies to force buyers (especially those who weren't on maintenance contracts) to upgrade as frequently as possible. In part for supportability reasons, vendors still cut off support for old versions at some point, but from a revenue perspective, subscriptions get rid of much of the reason to force upgrades.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Back in the day fixing bugs meant buying the next version, with a possible discount for being an existing customer.
- Clubber 9y ago
  Software companies used to survive through maintenance contracts for enterprise software and upgrades for consumer software. With the Apple App Store model, all upgrades are required to be free. This of course took a huge chunk of revenue away from software shops. >It's just a case of holding information hostage in the cloud because you can. Or because they have to. >Consumers aren't there as a substitute welfare state to provide eternal employment for hungry programmers. Software is expensive. Developers are expensive. I much prefer the upgrade model to the subscription model, but the marketplace in a round about way, decided it would rather pay eternally rather than one version at a time. Photoshop use to cost around $800 for a license, now it's $20 a month. That works out to 3.33 years until you pay as much as an outright license. I'm fairly certain that the Photoshop upgrade schedule was shorter than 3.33 years, so in the end, you end up paying less, assuming you constantly upgraded. *The upgrade prices was usually cheaper than the original full license, but I don't know how that works out long term with the subscription model.
  - detaro 9y ago
    With Adobe CC it really depends on what combination of software you had and how often you updated. AFAIK, if you bought only one or two applications and skipped every other version, CC is basically always more expensive. (update prices were a lot lower than full, and upgraded the second-to-last version as well (and in the beginning, even more)) If you bought the larger bundles and/or want to keep it up-to-date all the time, CC pricing generally is similar or cheaper.
  - nhtoe78hnt 9y ago
    > With the Apple App Store model, all upgrades are required to be free. That's not true at all. You can, at any time, take your FooSoftware 1.x off the store and make a new product called FooSoftware 2.x and charge the new price for it.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      Yes, but that's a workaround. All the effort you put into marketing an app called "FooTime" is now devalued because the actual app name is now "FooTime2" Furthermore, if you remove "FooTime" from the store, there are now a bunch of dead links.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Subscription is a reasonable model for software that's part of your core workflows and that you probably want to be current on in any case. If you're a graphic professional, Adobe Creative Cloud is mostly a reasonable deal. If you dust off Photoshop Elements a few times a year? Not so much. Similarly, with a few exceptions, subscribing to something like a game doesn't really make sense for a buyer. It would be like subscribing to a movie or, as you say, a book. I'm probably going to play it once (or even a few times) and it's going to sit unused. The flip side of the author's premise is that subscribing to something, even for a very low price, is generally a much higher bar to me than taking a flyer on something at $5-$10. Yes, there's some combination of subscription price vs. purchase price where I'd view the subscription as lower risk but I tend to be pretty conservative about opening up monthly money leaks.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  Imagine if one cup of coffee "worked" for ten years, how much you'd care if Starbucks went out of business? Excluding the most robust embedded systems on spacecraft and nuclear submarines, I don't know any software especially consumer software that would last 10 years without revision. Maybe a better analogy is having an unlimited refill.
  - kgwgk 9y ago
    I use software I bought 10 years ago. It works as well as it did in 2006. (Edit: to be fair, I’ve checked and while I bought it in 2007 I paid for maintenance for a while and I upgraded the software in 2010. Anyway, that’s over 7 years ago.)
aaron-lebo 9y ago
If you believe this, then I'll let you know that there are exactly two ways that I'll pay a subscription fee for your software (generally, not aimed at author): 1. It is providing a service (Spotify). 2. It is open source. You might not want to try to or know how to monetize the second option, but I'm not paying you a monthly fee for closed source software that you or your company are going to inevitably neglect/abandon/sell to someone who cares even less. I'm happy to pay a monthly fee so you can make your open software better, though. Welcome to the way this was always going to play out; the only way it could have played out. Indeed.
- dannysu 9y ago
  Standard Note, which the author is talking about, is open-source btw. Apparently you can self-host Standard File server [1] yourself if you don't want to sync with their server. [1]: https://github.com/standardfile
- jerguismi 9y ago
  > You might not want to try to or know how to monetize the second option, but I'm not paying you a monthly fee for closed source software that you or your company are going to inevitably neglect/abandon/sell to someone who cares even less. I am, sometimes it is just the best choice in an imperfect world. Of course I would prefer to pay for open source but no such offers exist.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > It is providing a service (Spotify) How are you defining what is and isn't a service independent of pricing frequency?
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Does it create recurring costs for the developer, or is it something where the costs are single-time? I won't pay subscription for a software I install locally with no online features that never gets updates and has no support. (Even though Adobe thinks I should)
  - 9y ago
AznHisoka 9y ago
"Consider the nonsensical way software is currently done: developers spend endless hours researching, developing, fixing, and providing support for software, the hardest of which is probably the last of that array of responsibilities. " None of which matters. Only capitalism and consumer demand for your service.
pjmlp 9y ago
Subscriptions only works with business users. Outside some outliers like Office and anti-virus, the majority of consumers won't buy into subscriptions for software, they would rather pirate it.
- tedeh 9y ago
  Piracy is probably the main reason why software developers are finding more success with shipping subscription based software. Most (prospective) users will indeed not subscribe, but you will probably still catch a significant portion of users that would have pirated instead if they had the chance. See what Spotify (and other streaming services) did to illegal downloading for instance.
  - cordite 9y ago
    Well, spotify isn't offering unique product. They are just offering convenience to what is already in the world.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  Yeah, too bad most companies only value business users tho.
- anonymousiam 9y ago
  Office is only "successful" at using the subscription model because Microsoft has eliminated other options.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    This is false. All of the existing full retail options are still available. (In physical stores, cards for each are sold on the same rack.) Office 365 is cheaper on a year-one purchase and can include multiple PCs in a single license, but ends up costlier over time due to renewals. I believe it is somewhere around Office 365 Personal (1 PC) - $69.99/yr Office 365 Home (3 PCs) - $99.99/yr Office 2016 Home (1 PC) - $149.99/forever
- 9y ago
slackoverflower 9y ago
The current status quo for consumers is software should be free. Changing that is going to be very, very tough.
- prodikl 9y ago
  i remember back when my dad bought lotus 123 for like $60 at the local store. that was a fair value i think the app store and ad-supported software really devalued a lot of forms of software for most lay people. my wife still gasps when i spend a buck on software
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Just looked at a random PC Magazine from the mid-eighties. Lotus 1-2-3 was $319, which is about $700 in today's money. And that was by no means an outlier. A lot of PC software used to be very expensive.
- ghaff 9y ago
  And the status quo for developer pay should be zero as well. All they do is type stuff that gets turned into zeros and ones. /s
jerguismi 9y ago
I used to made iPhone apps which cost few dollars back in the days. Worked great for me the time being, now I have moved to other stuff. Not everything needs to work indefinitely, software or business can have a lifespan, and I think that's fine. My advice is that don't try to push the subscription model everywhere. For some things it simply doesn't work that well and you might make better buck by just selling packages.
- jwong_ 9y ago
  I've come to the same conclusion. Why do one-time wonders get a free pass on indefinite business? I believe a business should have to innovate to keep recurring business. Artificially tying it to a subscription is just milking a cow for more than it's worth. Or in this case, charging for access to an unlimited cow that you sometimes augment.
goatlover 9y ago
> But when will we finally learn that the digital realm is real, if not realer, than the physical? This is a silly statement since the digital depends on the physical for existence, and digital content only makes sense in the context of culture formed by flesh and blood human beings. A massive EMP pulse or collapse of civilization will show just how "real" the digital is.
jwr 9y ago
Yes, please. I was happy to see Ulysses switch to subscription-based pricing and I would be happy to see other apps I use do the same thing (Yep, for example). These are apps that I use every day. I need them to work. I don't need new fancy flashy features that bring in new users. I need reliability, maintenance, minor improvements, constant optimizations. This is not possible without subscriptions. I'd much rather pay regularly for a small number of good, well-maintained apps, than have hundreds of crappy cheap one-shot apps that get released and then slowly fall into disrepair.
- stillhere 9y ago
  Here's another business model: Why not just buy updates? Also, there's nothing stopping the software owner from jacking up the prices for no reason. You need your app to work? Sorry you've been cut off.
stillhere 9y ago
It is not the only way to do software and nothing says you have to maintain your software for eternity either. There are people out there who write simple games $2.99 per download in the app store and focus on volume who make a nice chunk of change.
Veratyr 9y ago
This clearly isn't the case, there are numerous successful developers that don't use the subscription momdel: - In the photography space: Capture One Pro, DxO Optics Pro, ON1. - In the video space: Avid, DaVinci Resolve, Sony Vegas. - In the illustration space: Corel, Clip Studio Paint, Painttool SAI. - In the audio space: ProTools, Ableton, ACID Pro. - Nearly all video games. - JetBrains, which has a novel subscription + purchase model where you can cancel your subscription and keep using the software. I'd argue that the only case where you need a subscription model to stay afloat is when you don't add enough value that your users will be willing to purchase an upgrade.
- have_faith 9y ago
  > Nearly all video games. Have any games development studio attempted a subscription model to games development and release? Not promoting the idea, wondering if it's been considered. Some popular studios with a good track record could certainly entertain the idea.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    EA has, with Origin All Access.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    The DLC model is essentially an optional subscription. A full year of Call of Duty with DLC through to the next year's launch will cost you about $120. Since people move to playing the new DLC's lobbies, if you don't buy the DLC, you'll find much more limited matchmaking. I hate the segregating of games like COD by DLC pack ownership, and wish they WOULD just do a $10/month subscription, and keep adding maps and singleplayer campaigns instead of dropping all my favorite maps each year. It's a big reason I no longer buy their titles regularly.
  - problems 9y ago
    EA offers one called Origin Access, it offers last year's crappy titles for $5/mo. Sometimes some older good stuff too. You also get early access to new stuff and a discount on new games, friends and I were buying it when Battlefield 1 got released because it was cheap enough that 1 month got you enough savings to make up the $5 price and got you into the beta. Not a terrible model, but not something I'm excited to pay for in most cases.
kylehotchkiss 9y ago
I can't help but feel companies take advantage of people not reading credit card statements (and forgetting they signed up for subscriptions). I don't get email payment receipts from Dropbox or Creative Cloud, I have to go digging in their websites to find them. There seems to be less accountability to develop new features... Lightroom for example, it's still the 2015 version. Adobe doesn't seem too interested in modernizing it beyond adding some sync features. If they weren't doing the subscription thing they'd need to focus on it to make it innovative.
- laythea 9y ago
  Come on! They can't be expected to keep working on it can they? I mean, they already sold you it. What fool would do that??
- ghaff 9y ago
  To be fair, the Lightroom CC enhancements are mostly around mobile and online (which I don't care much about personally). Lightroom does seem to have stagnated a bit though I don't really have a list of new features that I really would like to see. In any case, the fact that Lightroom is at least theoretically also still being sold as a standalone non-subscription product should increase the incentive to do a new feature-laden release, not decrease it.
antaviana 9y ago
We've been selling B2B desktop software on a subscription basis since we started 5 years ago. Previously it was freeware. One of the things that I like most is that entitling all your user base to your latest and greatest version software makes many users install the latest version, which is what also happens with freeware. The lack of need to support older versions greatly simplifies support. Also a good thing of subscriptions is that because the monetary incentive of acquiring a new user is exactly the same as having an existing customer renew, you do not start adding features just for the sake of justifying a major paid upgrade.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I refuse to pay a subscription for software. If you want recurring money from me, sell new versions that have things I want. (I do not buy new versions of Microsoft Office, because repainting the same thing and adding features I don't use anyways isn't worth money to me.) Mandating that my software stops working unless I pay more for it is a surefire way to make me go somewhere else for software. I used to buy Adobe Photoshop, and have since moved to Affinity Photo ($50, one-time, does everything I used Photoshop for) since they moved to subscription-only. I outright will never have "Office 365", and strongly recommend to anyone who asks to buy the full retail editions instead. If Microsoft ever switches to 365-only, no big deal, open source software is more than adequate in this area.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I refuse to pay a subscription for software. If you want recurring money from me, sell new versions that have things I want. Do you want your old software to keep working with new OS upgrades? In the case of iOS: - If you bought an app that was created before the iPhone 4, do you want higher resolution images? - If you bought an app that was created before the iPhone 5 do you want the app to take advantage of the full display? --If you bought an app before the 5s that was 32 bit, do you want the app to keep working with iOS 11? --If you bought an iPad app do you want it to take advantage of larger iPad sizes? The new multitasking features? The new drag and drop features? Either you pay a subscription or you pay for new versions.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I am entirely okay with paying for new versions, especially if they are updated to take advantage of new features or support for new devices.
    - Fifer82 9y ago
      I agree with you entirely. I will pretty much never pay any subscription. I was even happy to throw my 1999-2011 Adobe Suite bread and butter in the bin over the cloud thing. It just doesn't work for me. It is indeed a complete mugs game.
kuschku 9y ago
> Businesses can only survive if people have to pay for the same products over and over again, or if they break frequently enough that people have to rebuy them constantly That's basically the thesis. And that's bullshit. If I buy something, I want it to work for eternity. The subscription model costs a massive amount of money for the customer, and is just further rent-seeking, bankrupting customers and transferring wealth. No thanks. If you want me to pay continually money, you should continually provide something in return for that. Just to continue using something I already paid for is not a good enough justification.
- ttoinou 9y ago
  If I buy something, I want it to work for eternity Software are always installed in a specific environment, which is prone to change. The associated service of support cannot be given for eternity just for a one time purchase.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Of course, they can sell a new version optimized for a different environment. And I can emulate the old environment. And of course I am okay with MMORPGs or cloud services charging continually, as they have server costs. But I don't want to pay just to keep using a product I already paid for.
- bitL 9y ago
  Yes, it's totally rent-seeking. And this is what destroys economies: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nobel-economist-takes-aim-at-rent-seeking-banking-and-healthcare-industries-2017-03-06?siteid=rss http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nobel-economist-takes-aim-a...
ThomPete 9y ago
Yes and no. I am doing quite well with my app http://www.ghostnoteapp.com http://www.ghostnoteapp.com which is a one of purchase. However I am exploring various services around. At the end of the day though I want people to be able to buy it as a stand alone and then if they feel like they need it and I need to use some sort of server storage/activity I will charge for it. Already working on one subscription service.
- bitL 9y ago
  Do individual users with one-off and businesses with subscription. Don't force either. For businesses stability and the fact that the SW is supported matters. For users the cognitive load of not needing to pay another tax on SW that is used from time to time matters.
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    Thats actually a really good point, food forthough. Thanks for that.
arihant 9y ago
No. Just no. Charge a subscription if it's an ongoing service. If you're moving bits for me, running code on cloud for me on ongoing basis, charge me a subscription. If you gave me a binary to run, I pay you once. This is exactly why I shifted from Adobe to Affinity. Comparing a pile of binary to Starbucks is less than stellar. Coffee is an ongoing service. You make coffee for me everyday, fresh. The cup does not last me years. There are a lot of things I pay for once in years, and it costs less than a fresh brew. A pen is a good example. A book is another. And frankly, a book is far more comparable to a copy of binary than Starbucks. Unless the author buys a book and pays for it every month until he returns it, I won't take his word on selling binary. This advice will just lead to people reverse engineering your binaries and pirating it. Just ask Adobe.
- bitL 9y ago
  Adobe scored record profits as they switched to subscriptions so it might not be the best example. For businesses subscriptions are better; for individual users worse. Why not cover both bases instead of force one way or the other?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nhtoe78hnt 9y ago
    That may be true, but it's difficult to separate that out from the other things that happened at the same time. They also started a cloud service for users and offered discounts on subscriptions. Who's to say that it wouldn't have worked out just as well if they made the cloud service and offered discounts on boxed copies of the software? Unfortunately, you can't do the experiment twice.
    - bitL 9y ago
      I am still running on CS6 so for me personally CC doesn't work ;-) I was willing to buy CS7 but it never happened.
- 9y ago
bitL 9y ago
I don't know, this sounds really silly. It's better to raise purchase prices; of course nobody would make living off $0.99 apps. But how many people would be willing to pay you a recurrent tax on your software either? Very few. How many apps would you be willing to keep if you needed to pay subscription? Yes, there was a race to the bottom in mobile apps, as the space was pretty new and trivial apps were feasible; for those it worked very well. The situation is different, ad revenue is falling and one-off prices are too low. Just increase them then!
dgudkov 9y ago
There are two different behavioral models for customer and enterprise software: Buyers of consumer software want to own it. They use it for own benefit and it frequently has short lifespan. That's why they don't like subscriptions. Buyers of enterprise software want to create added value from it, so it's not about owning it's about leveraging. Like with any other business expenses, software expenses don't really matter as long as they generate more value than cost. Also, subscription model suits corporate better as it doesn't require pulling large amounts of money out from working capital.
turc1656 9y ago
I think free vs one-time vs subscription depends heavily on the product/service being offered. I am of the belief that a recurring subscription should provide something meaningful that can't realistically be done on my machine(s) or requires ongoing research, data, etc. For example, I see no justifiable reason for Adobe's decision to go the subscription route. Software like Adobe offers has clear features that are unique to each version. As they build the feature set they also work to ensure compatibility with the modern operating systems and platforms. A customer pays for the version they need at the time. Should their needs grow or they require support for a modern OS that their existing product version doesn't support, then they should pay for the upgrade. If not, why would they continually shell out money on features and support they do not require? On the flip side, data hosting services are the exact opposite. A monthly fee for ongoing storage is the only thing that makes sense. Similarly, a website that maintains a searchable database of retail product information for internet vendors/sellers to use requires constant maintenance and that also justifies a subscription model. One other thought - the whole app game is basically one of trying to hit it big and getting hundreds of thousands of users so you can either reap the rewards from recurring advertising revenues or the one-time purchase fees. Articles like this exist because app stores are overcrowded with choices and they usually don't tend to fan out evenly in terms of users. Usually there are 1-3 that are heavily used with the rest just being noise in the competition for that type of app. Those publishers get the lion's share of the revenue for their specific app type.
archagon 9y ago
Not going to happen. At least, not for me. $ per month is a financial and (perhaps more importantly) mental burden, and I'm certainly not going to have it hanging over my head over a text editor (or a text replacement utility, or a password manager). I'm usually not political in my software choices, but subscriptions make me see Stallman-red. If my favorite app goes subscription, I automatically move on to a competitor or (more likely) an open source alternative. Over time, I've realized that the only real way to guarantee longevity for your essential tools is to either use big-name products (Google, Apple, etc.) or to switch to open source alternatives. In the long run -- or even five years! -- subscriptions won't help your indie app survive. I'm also a developer, and I hate subscriptions from that side too. I'm interested in making software, not providing personal support or maintaining servers. Most apps don't need to spend a decade in development; you're just finding new ways of burning valuable programming time. I prefer to release my software and move on while still providing occasional updates, making up for lost repeat business with a polyculture of products. In my opinion, the way forward is to have a system for collectively funding open source projects of all sizes. Let the software be free, but fairly pay developers for their efforts. (Snowdrift[1] wants to do something like this, but I haven't seen much activity there in the past few years.) Most of my essential day-to-day software now is open source. We need the best talent, from code gurus to UI wizards, working on these applications, because I am convinced it will be the only software still standing a century down the line. (In fairness, I think Standardnotes is doing it right. Their code is open source and you can host your own instance if you like. This does not apply to closed source software in the midst of the subscription craze like Ulysses, 1Password, TextExpander, etc.) [1]: https://snowdrift.coop https://snowdrift.coop
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  I'm interested in making software, not providing personal support or maintaining servers...I prefer to release my software and move on while still releasing occasional updates, making up for lost repeat business with a polyculture of products. What you basically just said was: I want to build products, not a business. Ok, that's fine, but realize that's the freelancer's life, not someone who is actually trying to make a business around their product.
sputknick 9y ago
I've had an idea in the back of my head for a while, that micropayments (and maybe blockchains by extension) might have an answer to this. What if installing software was free, but you paid a fraction of a penny for every minute/hour that you run it? Right now this isn't practical, but what if the friction around payments was able to drop to near zero?
- ghaff 9y ago
  It exists in the SaaS world. For example, charges based on volume for field marketing campaigns. And, of course, most of AWS is pay-per-use (either time or amount). It's probably not more widely used even in the SaaS world because people generally don't like the thought of there being a meter ticking while they're using something. Which in turn discourages use and that in turn means that users don't get as much value out of a product or service than they otherwise would.
- jodrellblank 9y ago
  Pay while it runs, you say? sleep(500); Say again? sleep(500); Takes twenty seconds to load? I'll look into it. Just enable debug logging, +10% runtime overhead...
anonacct37 9y ago
All of your complaints about how hard it is to make it as a developer are probably legitimate, but understand that there are 2 sides to every market. It's highly unlikely your app provides enough value to be worth paying for every single month for most people. Be honest, you've seen that the best way to monetize someone is to get them to pay you every month without thinking about it. This is we're bombarded with "first month's free, write to us via registered mail to cancel or you'll automatically be paying $100/month" offers. A subscription model is equivalent to a "I know a good number of people don't read their credit card statement every month and will forget to cancel" model. And that's fine. Attempting to get more money from people who are rich enough to not need to read their credit card statement is probably a more honest way to live than monetizing customers via ads or in app purchases like the rest of the "unicorns". [edit] I would like to tone down one sentence. When I say "your" I'm actually not referring to the author of this article, instead I'm referring to "A developer who currently sells his/her app for a one time fee of 0.99-3.99".
payne92 9y ago
> This has all but confirmed a belief that I have long suspected: > subscription is the only way to survive as a software company. No, no, no -- not at all. The subscription model may be the best way to thrive for certain kinds of software companies, at certain price points. But that doesn't make it a unilateral principle. For software with one-time or fleeting value (e.g. games), a classic perpetual license (pay up front) is often the best. For software with real upgrade value in releases (I'm NOT looking at you, Quicken), a perpetual + upgrade charge model may be the best fit. (Which is kind of like a subscription, but users pay when there's real value, not just elapsed time). And there's the evolving new world of in-app purchases, add-ons and hybrids: for example, you might sell an app up front, but then charge monthly/yearly for a related cloud-based service that has ongoing value (such as backups).
sp00ls 9y ago
ze
- iDemonix 9y ago
  Are there any HN extensions/plugins that allow you to tag users? I can tag garbage authors on Reddit with RES so I know to avoid their articles, it'd be handy to do the same on HN.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  There are no rules against submitting your own blog posts. As we know, it's quite common on HN. Though I have noticed personally that my blog posts get more activity here when submitted by others. There are also no rules against plugging a product in a post. Again, it's extremely common on HN. OP's user account was created 1339 days ago. I don't think his intention is suddenly to spam at all nor do I believe the post is "just a spam piece to advertise his app".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- sctb 9y ago
  The thing to do with articles you feel don't belong on Hacker News is to flag them. The name calling and gratuitous negativity are against the guidelines and end up discouraging submitters who might have something on-topic to share, and we don't want to miss those. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - sp00ls 9y ago
    please delete my account here.
laythea 9y ago
This is a glorified ad! Shame on you!
thescribe 9y ago
I guess I'll be buying a lot less software.
open_bear 9y ago
Subscription is the best way for companies to do software in capitalism. Take Microsoft Word 2003: perfectly good word processor, still works fine. I've spent 60$ 14 years ago and had no intention to switch. But Microsoft needs money, so they force the upgrade to 2007 by, among other things, inventing the docx format. And then 2010, and then 2013, and then 2017. Logical conclusion is Office 365, where you are forced to pay 100$ every year. Is it a stable source of income for the company, better, than selling box copies? Yes. Is it in customer's best interests? No.

55 points by mobitar 9y ago

consider if Starbucks customers visited the store only once every 10 years to buy a single cup of coffee? How soon do you imagine they’d go out of business? Imagine if one cup of coffee "worked" for ten years, how much you'd care if Starbucks went out of business? Consumers aren't there as a substitute welfare state to provide eternal employment for hungry programmers. Nobody pays a subscription to an author instead of buying a book. "Oh they rewrote chapter one?" It's just a case of holding information hostage in the cloud because you can. [Stallmanning intensifies]

wccrawford 9y ago
Indeed. I just unsubscribed from Adobe's online Photoshop offering because I don't use it enough to pay $10/mo every month. Instead, I went looking around and found a great alternative with a set price... And then I decided not to buy that until I actually needed it. Once I needed something for simple image work, I ended up downloading Krita for free and it works just fine. I may still buy the other software, but not until Krita can't do what I need. (To be fair, the other software looks amazing... But so is Photoshop, if you use it daily. Which I don't.)
- tapatio 9y ago
  You are not the target market.
  - jodrellblank 9y ago
    You say that as if being the target is desirable.
StavrosK 9y ago
Yeah, this is just a bunch of "why should I charge a little when I can charge a lot?". I don't know, people spent a bunch of man-years making my washing machine, but I don't pay a subscription on it. If the choice is between $120 up-front or $5 a month, maybe it's worth it (e.g. maybe paying $8/mo is better than paying however much for Photoshop+Lightroom), but I have a feeling that this developer is talking about $2 up-front or $5/mo.
- chrisaycock 9y ago
  > I don't know, people spent a bunch of man-years making my washing machine, but I don't pay a subscription on it. You pay a subscription for the detergent. Hardware is the washing machine; software is the detergent.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Detergent is a consumable, and typically not made by the same company that made the washing machine. Nonsense analogy. Even without a washing machine you'd use soap.
- probablybroken 9y ago
  In the case of a washing machine, they design the unit to stop functioning in the near future, sell you a limited warranty, and then frequently try to sell you an extended warranty. It's different, but yes, things are dressed up to extract the most they can from a customer.
  - iamatworknow 9y ago
    >they design the unit to stop functioning in the near future I don't believe anything is "designed" to stop functioning. That's just a happy accident that results from cost cutting measures in the manufacturing process.
    - probablybroken 9y ago
      Ok, maybe it's arrived at via an evolutionary process then - with selection being provided by stakeholders. The outcome is however the same.
Analemma_ 9y ago
> Consumers aren't there as a substitute welfare state to provide eternal employment for hungry programmers. The flip side to this argument is that programmers aren't obligated to continue fixing bugs and adding features to software forever if they aren't being paid. Software subscriptions are the only way I know of to align the incentives properly so that programmers will actually fix things instead of moving on to an entirely new piece of software that they can sell anew and leave the old one to rot, which is a real problem that has plagued small dev shops forever.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Yes. Historically, it was very common for the stock response for bugs to be "It's fixed in the next version." There was a very strong incentive for companies to force buyers (especially those who weren't on maintenance contracts) to upgrade as frequently as possible. In part for supportability reasons, vendors still cut off support for old versions at some point, but from a revenue perspective, subscriptions get rid of much of the reason to force upgrades.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Back in the day fixing bugs meant buying the next version, with a possible discount for being an existing customer.
Clubber 9y ago
Software companies used to survive through maintenance contracts for enterprise software and upgrades for consumer software. With the Apple App Store model, all upgrades are required to be free. This of course took a huge chunk of revenue away from software shops. >It's just a case of holding information hostage in the cloud because you can. Or because they have to. >Consumers aren't there as a substitute welfare state to provide eternal employment for hungry programmers. Software is expensive. Developers are expensive. I much prefer the upgrade model to the subscription model, but the marketplace in a round about way, decided it would rather pay eternally rather than one version at a time. Photoshop use to cost around $800 for a license, now it's $20 a month. That works out to 3.33 years until you pay as much as an outright license. I'm fairly certain that the Photoshop upgrade schedule was shorter than 3.33 years, so in the end, you end up paying less, assuming you constantly upgraded. *The upgrade prices was usually cheaper than the original full license, but I don't know how that works out long term with the subscription model.
- detaro 9y ago
  With Adobe CC it really depends on what combination of software you had and how often you updated. AFAIK, if you bought only one or two applications and skipped every other version, CC is basically always more expensive. (update prices were a lot lower than full, and upgraded the second-to-last version as well (and in the beginning, even more)) If you bought the larger bundles and/or want to keep it up-to-date all the time, CC pricing generally is similar or cheaper.
- nhtoe78hnt 9y ago
  > With the Apple App Store model, all upgrades are required to be free. That's not true at all. You can, at any time, take your FooSoftware 1.x off the store and make a new product called FooSoftware 2.x and charge the new price for it.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    Yes, but that's a workaround. All the effort you put into marketing an app called "FooTime" is now devalued because the actual app name is now "FooTime2" Furthermore, if you remove "FooTime" from the store, there are now a bunch of dead links.
ghaff 9y ago
Subscription is a reasonable model for software that's part of your core workflows and that you probably want to be current on in any case. If you're a graphic professional, Adobe Creative Cloud is mostly a reasonable deal. If you dust off Photoshop Elements a few times a year? Not so much. Similarly, with a few exceptions, subscribing to something like a game doesn't really make sense for a buyer. It would be like subscribing to a movie or, as you say, a book. I'm probably going to play it once (or even a few times) and it's going to sit unused. The flip side of the author's premise is that subscribing to something, even for a very low price, is generally a much higher bar to me than taking a flyer on something at $5-$10. Yes, there's some combination of subscription price vs. purchase price where I'd view the subscription as lower risk but I tend to be pretty conservative about opening up monthly money leaks.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Imagine if one cup of coffee "worked" for ten years, how much you'd care if Starbucks went out of business? Excluding the most robust embedded systems on spacecraft and nuclear submarines, I don't know any software especially consumer software that would last 10 years without revision. Maybe a better analogy is having an unlimited refill.
- kgwgk 9y ago
  I use software I bought 10 years ago. It works as well as it did in 2006. (Edit: to be fair, I’ve checked and while I bought it in 2007 I paid for maintenance for a while and I upgraded the software in 2010. Anyway, that’s over 7 years ago.)

aaron-lebo 9y ago

If you believe this, then I'll let you know that there are exactly two ways that I'll pay a subscription fee for your software (generally, not aimed at author): 1. It is providing a service (Spotify). 2. It is open source. You might not want to try to or know how to monetize the second option, but I'm not paying you a monthly fee for closed source software that you or your company are going to inevitably neglect/abandon/sell to someone who cares even less. I'm happy to pay a monthly fee so you can make your open software better, though. Welcome to the way this was always going to play out; the only way it could have played out. Indeed.

dannysu 9y ago
Standard Note, which the author is talking about, is open-source btw. Apparently you can self-host Standard File server [1] yourself if you don't want to sync with their server. [1]: https://github.com/standardfile
jerguismi 9y ago
> You might not want to try to or know how to monetize the second option, but I'm not paying you a monthly fee for closed source software that you or your company are going to inevitably neglect/abandon/sell to someone who cares even less. I am, sometimes it is just the best choice in an imperfect world. Of course I would prefer to pay for open source but no such offers exist.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> It is providing a service (Spotify) How are you defining what is and isn't a service independent of pricing frequency?
- kuschku 9y ago
  Does it create recurring costs for the developer, or is it something where the costs are single-time? I won't pay subscription for a software I install locally with no online features that never gets updates and has no support. (Even though Adobe thinks I should)
- 9y ago

AznHisoka 9y ago

"Consider the nonsensical way software is currently done: developers spend endless hours researching, developing, fixing, and providing support for software, the hardest of which is probably the last of that array of responsibilities. " None of which matters. Only capitalism and consumer demand for your service.

pjmlp 9y ago

Subscriptions only works with business users. Outside some outliers like Office and anti-virus, the majority of consumers won't buy into subscriptions for software, they would rather pirate it.

tedeh 9y ago
Piracy is probably the main reason why software developers are finding more success with shipping subscription based software. Most (prospective) users will indeed not subscribe, but you will probably still catch a significant portion of users that would have pirated instead if they had the chance. See what Spotify (and other streaming services) did to illegal downloading for instance.
- cordite 9y ago
  Well, spotify isn't offering unique product. They are just offering convenience to what is already in the world.
romanovcode 9y ago
Yeah, too bad most companies only value business users tho.
anonymousiam 9y ago
Office is only "successful" at using the subscription model because Microsoft has eliminated other options.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  This is false. All of the existing full retail options are still available. (In physical stores, cards for each are sold on the same rack.) Office 365 is cheaper on a year-one purchase and can include multiple PCs in a single license, but ends up costlier over time due to renewals. I believe it is somewhere around Office 365 Personal (1 PC) - $69.99/yr Office 365 Home (3 PCs) - $99.99/yr Office 2016 Home (1 PC) - $149.99/forever
9y ago

slackoverflower 9y ago

The current status quo for consumers is software should be free. Changing that is going to be very, very tough.

prodikl 9y ago
i remember back when my dad bought lotus 123 for like $60 at the local store. that was a fair value i think the app store and ad-supported software really devalued a lot of forms of software for most lay people. my wife still gasps when i spend a buck on software
- ghaff 9y ago
  Just looked at a random PC Magazine from the mid-eighties. Lotus 1-2-3 was $319, which is about $700 in today's money. And that was by no means an outlier. A lot of PC software used to be very expensive.
ghaff 9y ago
And the status quo for developer pay should be zero as well. All they do is type stuff that gets turned into zeros and ones. /s

jerguismi 9y ago

I used to made iPhone apps which cost few dollars back in the days. Worked great for me the time being, now I have moved to other stuff. Not everything needs to work indefinitely, software or business can have a lifespan, and I think that's fine. My advice is that don't try to push the subscription model everywhere. For some things it simply doesn't work that well and you might make better buck by just selling packages.

jwong_ 9y ago
I've come to the same conclusion. Why do one-time wonders get a free pass on indefinite business? I believe a business should have to innovate to keep recurring business. Artificially tying it to a subscription is just milking a cow for more than it's worth. Or in this case, charging for access to an unlimited cow that you sometimes augment.

goatlover 9y ago

> But when will we finally learn that the digital realm is real, if not realer, than the physical? This is a silly statement since the digital depends on the physical for existence, and digital content only makes sense in the context of culture formed by flesh and blood human beings. A massive EMP pulse or collapse of civilization will show just how "real" the digital is.

jwr 9y ago

Yes, please. I was happy to see Ulysses switch to subscription-based pricing and I would be happy to see other apps I use do the same thing (Yep, for example). These are apps that I use every day. I need them to work. I don't need new fancy flashy features that bring in new users. I need reliability, maintenance, minor improvements, constant optimizations. This is not possible without subscriptions. I'd much rather pay regularly for a small number of good, well-maintained apps, than have hundreds of crappy cheap one-shot apps that get released and then slowly fall into disrepair.

stillhere 9y ago
Here's another business model: Why not just buy updates? Also, there's nothing stopping the software owner from jacking up the prices for no reason. You need your app to work? Sorry you've been cut off.

stillhere 9y ago

It is not the only way to do software and nothing says you have to maintain your software for eternity either. There are people out there who write simple games $2.99 per download in the app store and focus on volume who make a nice chunk of change.

Veratyr 9y ago

This clearly isn't the case, there are numerous successful developers that don't use the subscription momdel: - In the photography space: Capture One Pro, DxO Optics Pro, ON1. - In the video space: Avid, DaVinci Resolve, Sony Vegas. - In the illustration space: Corel, Clip Studio Paint, Painttool SAI. - In the audio space: ProTools, Ableton, ACID Pro. - Nearly all video games. - JetBrains, which has a novel subscription + purchase model where you can cancel your subscription and keep using the software. I'd argue that the only case where you need a subscription model to stay afloat is when you don't add enough value that your users will be willing to purchase an upgrade.

have_faith 9y ago
> Nearly all video games. Have any games development studio attempted a subscription model to games development and release? Not promoting the idea, wondering if it's been considered. Some popular studios with a good track record could certainly entertain the idea.
- kuschku 9y ago
  EA has, with Origin All Access.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  The DLC model is essentially an optional subscription. A full year of Call of Duty with DLC through to the next year's launch will cost you about $120. Since people move to playing the new DLC's lobbies, if you don't buy the DLC, you'll find much more limited matchmaking. I hate the segregating of games like COD by DLC pack ownership, and wish they WOULD just do a $10/month subscription, and keep adding maps and singleplayer campaigns instead of dropping all my favorite maps each year. It's a big reason I no longer buy their titles regularly.
- problems 9y ago
  EA offers one called Origin Access, it offers last year's crappy titles for $5/mo. Sometimes some older good stuff too. You also get early access to new stuff and a discount on new games, friends and I were buying it when Battlefield 1 got released because it was cheap enough that 1 month got you enough savings to make up the $5 price and got you into the beta. Not a terrible model, but not something I'm excited to pay for in most cases.

kylehotchkiss 9y ago

I can't help but feel companies take advantage of people not reading credit card statements (and forgetting they signed up for subscriptions). I don't get email payment receipts from Dropbox or Creative Cloud, I have to go digging in their websites to find them. There seems to be less accountability to develop new features... Lightroom for example, it's still the 2015 version. Adobe doesn't seem too interested in modernizing it beyond adding some sync features. If they weren't doing the subscription thing they'd need to focus on it to make it innovative.

laythea 9y ago
Come on! They can't be expected to keep working on it can they? I mean, they already sold you it. What fool would do that??
ghaff 9y ago
To be fair, the Lightroom CC enhancements are mostly around mobile and online (which I don't care much about personally). Lightroom does seem to have stagnated a bit though I don't really have a list of new features that I really would like to see. In any case, the fact that Lightroom is at least theoretically also still being sold as a standalone non-subscription product should increase the incentive to do a new feature-laden release, not decrease it.

antaviana 9y ago

We've been selling B2B desktop software on a subscription basis since we started 5 years ago. Previously it was freeware. One of the things that I like most is that entitling all your user base to your latest and greatest version software makes many users install the latest version, which is what also happens with freeware. The lack of need to support older versions greatly simplifies support. Also a good thing of subscriptions is that because the monetary incentive of acquiring a new user is exactly the same as having an existing customer renew, you do not start adding features just for the sake of justifying a major paid upgrade.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

I refuse to pay a subscription for software. If you want recurring money from me, sell new versions that have things I want. (I do not buy new versions of Microsoft Office, because repainting the same thing and adding features I don't use anyways isn't worth money to me.) Mandating that my software stops working unless I pay more for it is a surefire way to make me go somewhere else for software. I used to buy Adobe Photoshop, and have since moved to Affinity Photo ($50, one-time, does everything I used Photoshop for) since they moved to subscription-only. I outright will never have "Office 365", and strongly recommend to anyone who asks to buy the full retail editions instead. If Microsoft ever switches to 365-only, no big deal, open source software is more than adequate in this area.

scarface74 9y ago
I refuse to pay a subscription for software. If you want recurring money from me, sell new versions that have things I want. Do you want your old software to keep working with new OS upgrades? In the case of iOS: - If you bought an app that was created before the iPhone 4, do you want higher resolution images? - If you bought an app that was created before the iPhone 5 do you want the app to take advantage of the full display? --If you bought an app before the 5s that was 32 bit, do you want the app to keep working with iOS 11? --If you bought an iPad app do you want it to take advantage of larger iPad sizes? The new multitasking features? The new drag and drop features? Either you pay a subscription or you pay for new versions.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I am entirely okay with paying for new versions, especially if they are updated to take advantage of new features or support for new devices.
  - Fifer82 9y ago
    I agree with you entirely. I will pretty much never pay any subscription. I was even happy to throw my 1999-2011 Adobe Suite bread and butter in the bin over the cloud thing. It just doesn't work for me. It is indeed a complete mugs game.

kuschku 9y ago

> Businesses can only survive if people have to pay for the same products over and over again, or if they break frequently enough that people have to rebuy them constantly That's basically the thesis. And that's bullshit. If I buy something, I want it to work for eternity. The subscription model costs a massive amount of money for the customer, and is just further rent-seeking, bankrupting customers and transferring wealth. No thanks. If you want me to pay continually money, you should continually provide something in return for that. Just to continue using something I already paid for is not a good enough justification.

ttoinou 9y ago
If I buy something, I want it to work for eternity Software are always installed in a specific environment, which is prone to change. The associated service of support cannot be given for eternity just for a one time purchase.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Of course, they can sell a new version optimized for a different environment. And I can emulate the old environment. And of course I am okay with MMORPGs or cloud services charging continually, as they have server costs. But I don't want to pay just to keep using a product I already paid for.
bitL 9y ago
Yes, it's totally rent-seeking. And this is what destroys economies: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nobel-economist-takes-aim-at-rent-seeking-banking-and-healthcare-industries-2017-03-06?siteid=rss http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nobel-economist-takes-aim-a...

ThomPete 9y ago

Yes and no. I am doing quite well with my app http://www.ghostnoteapp.com http://www.ghostnoteapp.com which is a one of purchase. However I am exploring various services around. At the end of the day though I want people to be able to buy it as a stand alone and then if they feel like they need it and I need to use some sort of server storage/activity I will charge for it. Already working on one subscription service.

bitL 9y ago
Do individual users with one-off and businesses with subscription. Don't force either. For businesses stability and the fact that the SW is supported matters. For users the cognitive load of not needing to pay another tax on SW that is used from time to time matters.
- ThomPete 9y ago
  Thats actually a really good point, food forthough. Thanks for that.

arihant 9y ago

No. Just no. Charge a subscription if it's an ongoing service. If you're moving bits for me, running code on cloud for me on ongoing basis, charge me a subscription. If you gave me a binary to run, I pay you once. This is exactly why I shifted from Adobe to Affinity. Comparing a pile of binary to Starbucks is less than stellar. Coffee is an ongoing service. You make coffee for me everyday, fresh. The cup does not last me years. There are a lot of things I pay for once in years, and it costs less than a fresh brew. A pen is a good example. A book is another. And frankly, a book is far more comparable to a copy of binary than Starbucks. Unless the author buys a book and pays for it every month until he returns it, I won't take his word on selling binary. This advice will just lead to people reverse engineering your binaries and pirating it. Just ask Adobe.

bitL 9y ago
Adobe scored record profits as they switched to subscriptions so it might not be the best example. For businesses subscriptions are better; for individual users worse. Why not cover both bases instead of force one way or the other?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nhtoe78hnt 9y ago
  That may be true, but it's difficult to separate that out from the other things that happened at the same time. They also started a cloud service for users and offered discounts on subscriptions. Who's to say that it wouldn't have worked out just as well if they made the cloud service and offered discounts on boxed copies of the software? Unfortunately, you can't do the experiment twice.
  - bitL 9y ago
    I am still running on CS6 so for me personally CC doesn't work ;-) I was willing to buy CS7 but it never happened.
9y ago

bitL 9y ago

I don't know, this sounds really silly. It's better to raise purchase prices; of course nobody would make living off $0.99 apps. But how many people would be willing to pay you a recurrent tax on your software either? Very few. How many apps would you be willing to keep if you needed to pay subscription? Yes, there was a race to the bottom in mobile apps, as the space was pretty new and trivial apps were feasible; for those it worked very well. The situation is different, ad revenue is falling and one-off prices are too low. Just increase them then!

dgudkov 9y ago

There are two different behavioral models for customer and enterprise software: Buyers of consumer software want to own it. They use it for own benefit and it frequently has short lifespan. That's why they don't like subscriptions. Buyers of enterprise software want to create added value from it, so it's not about owning it's about leveraging. Like with any other business expenses, software expenses don't really matter as long as they generate more value than cost. Also, subscription model suits corporate better as it doesn't require pulling large amounts of money out from working capital.

turc1656 9y ago

I think free vs one-time vs subscription depends heavily on the product/service being offered. I am of the belief that a recurring subscription should provide something meaningful that can't realistically be done on my machine(s) or requires ongoing research, data, etc. For example, I see no justifiable reason for Adobe's decision to go the subscription route. Software like Adobe offers has clear features that are unique to each version. As they build the feature set they also work to ensure compatibility with the modern operating systems and platforms. A customer pays for the version they need at the time. Should their needs grow or they require support for a modern OS that their existing product version doesn't support, then they should pay for the upgrade. If not, why would they continually shell out money on features and support they do not require? On the flip side, data hosting services are the exact opposite. A monthly fee for ongoing storage is the only thing that makes sense. Similarly, a website that maintains a searchable database of retail product information for internet vendors/sellers to use requires constant maintenance and that also justifies a subscription model. One other thought - the whole app game is basically one of trying to hit it big and getting hundreds of thousands of users so you can either reap the rewards from recurring advertising revenues or the one-time purchase fees. Articles like this exist because app stores are overcrowded with choices and they usually don't tend to fan out evenly in terms of users. Usually there are 1-3 that are heavily used with the rest just being noise in the competition for that type of app. Those publishers get the lion's share of the revenue for their specific app type.

archagon 9y ago

Not going to happen. At least, not for me. $ per month is a financial and (perhaps more importantly) mental burden, and I'm certainly not going to have it hanging over my head over a text editor (or a text replacement utility, or a password manager). I'm usually not political in my software choices, but subscriptions make me see Stallman-red. If my favorite app goes subscription, I automatically move on to a competitor or (more likely) an open source alternative. Over time, I've realized that the only real way to guarantee longevity for your essential tools is to either use big-name products (Google, Apple, etc.) or to switch to open source alternatives. In the long run -- or even five years! -- subscriptions won't help your indie app survive. I'm also a developer, and I hate subscriptions from that side too. I'm interested in making software, not providing personal support or maintaining servers. Most apps don't need to spend a decade in development; you're just finding new ways of burning valuable programming time. I prefer to release my software and move on while still providing occasional updates, making up for lost repeat business with a polyculture of products. In my opinion, the way forward is to have a system for collectively funding open source projects of all sizes. Let the software be free, but fairly pay developers for their efforts. (Snowdrift[1] wants to do something like this, but I haven't seen much activity there in the past few years.) Most of my essential day-to-day software now is open source. We need the best talent, from code gurus to UI wizards, working on these applications, because I am convinced it will be the only software still standing a century down the line. (In fairness, I think Standardnotes is doing it right. Their code is open source and you can host your own instance if you like. This does not apply to closed source software in the midst of the subscription craze like Ulysses, 1Password, TextExpander, etc.) [1]: https://snowdrift.coop https://snowdrift.coop

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
I'm interested in making software, not providing personal support or maintaining servers...I prefer to release my software and move on while still releasing occasional updates, making up for lost repeat business with a polyculture of products. What you basically just said was: I want to build products, not a business. Ok, that's fine, but realize that's the freelancer's life, not someone who is actually trying to make a business around their product.

sputknick 9y ago

I've had an idea in the back of my head for a while, that micropayments (and maybe blockchains by extension) might have an answer to this. What if installing software was free, but you paid a fraction of a penny for every minute/hour that you run it? Right now this isn't practical, but what if the friction around payments was able to drop to near zero?

ghaff 9y ago
It exists in the SaaS world. For example, charges based on volume for field marketing campaigns. And, of course, most of AWS is pay-per-use (either time or amount). It's probably not more widely used even in the SaaS world because people generally don't like the thought of there being a meter ticking while they're using something. Which in turn discourages use and that in turn means that users don't get as much value out of a product or service than they otherwise would.
jodrellblank 9y ago
Pay while it runs, you say? sleep(500); Say again? sleep(500); Takes twenty seconds to load? I'll look into it. Just enable debug logging, +10% runtime overhead...

anonacct37 9y ago

All of your complaints about how hard it is to make it as a developer are probably legitimate, but understand that there are 2 sides to every market. It's highly unlikely your app provides enough value to be worth paying for every single month for most people. Be honest, you've seen that the best way to monetize someone is to get them to pay you every month without thinking about it. This is we're bombarded with "first month's free, write to us via registered mail to cancel or you'll automatically be paying $100/month" offers. A subscription model is equivalent to a "I know a good number of people don't read their credit card statement every month and will forget to cancel" model. And that's fine. Attempting to get more money from people who are rich enough to not need to read their credit card statement is probably a more honest way to live than monetizing customers via ads or in app purchases like the rest of the "unicorns". [edit] I would like to tone down one sentence. When I say "your" I'm actually not referring to the author of this article, instead I'm referring to "A developer who currently sells his/her app for a one time fee of 0.99-3.99".

payne92 9y ago

> This has all but confirmed a belief that I have long suspected: > subscription is the only way to survive as a software company. No, no, no -- not at all. The subscription model may be the best way to thrive for certain kinds of software companies, at certain price points. But that doesn't make it a unilateral principle. For software with one-time or fleeting value (e.g. games), a classic perpetual license (pay up front) is often the best. For software with real upgrade value in releases (I'm NOT looking at you, Quicken), a perpetual + upgrade charge model may be the best fit. (Which is kind of like a subscription, but users pay when there's real value, not just elapsed time). And there's the evolving new world of in-app purchases, add-ons and hybrids: for example, you might sell an app up front, but then charge monthly/yearly for a related cloud-based service that has ongoing value (such as backups).

sp00ls 9y ago

iDemonix 9y ago
Are there any HN extensions/plugins that allow you to tag users? I can tag garbage authors on Reddit with RES so I know to avoid their articles, it'd be handy to do the same on HN.
tedmiston 9y ago
There are no rules against submitting your own blog posts. As we know, it's quite common on HN. Though I have noticed personally that my blog posts get more activity here when submitted by others. There are also no rules against plugging a product in a post. Again, it's extremely common on HN. OP's user account was created 1339 days ago. I don't think his intention is suddenly to spam at all nor do I believe the post is "just a spam piece to advertise his app".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
sctb 9y ago
The thing to do with articles you feel don't belong on Hacker News is to flag them. The name calling and gratuitous negativity are against the guidelines and end up discouraging submitters who might have something on-topic to share, and we don't want to miss those. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sp00ls 9y ago
  please delete my account here.

laythea 9y ago

This is a glorified ad! Shame on you!

thescribe 9y ago

I guess I'll be buying a lot less software.

open_bear 9y ago

Subscription is the best way for companies to do software in capitalism. Take Microsoft Word 2003: perfectly good word processor, still works fine. I've spent 60$ 14 years ago and had no intention to switch. But Microsoft needs money, so they force the upgrade to 2007 by, among other things, inventing the docx format. And then 2010, and then 2013, and then 2017. Logical conclusion is Office 365, where you are forced to pay 100$ every year. Is it a stable source of income for the company, better, than selling box copies? Yes. Is it in customer's best interests? No.