4 ms·

I don't think the primary problem is cost, but that when you build your product tightly coupled with a propretary product that is hard to migrate off of then th

by tormeh 8y ago

I don't think the primary problem is cost, but that when you build your product tightly coupled with a propretary product that is hard to migrate off of then the vendor of that product can shake you down, or they can go bankrupt or what have you. It makes your business vulnerable, and no one wants that. Also your production environment crashing because a license expired. Fun times.

youdontknowtho 8y ago
You really aren't replying to the person who actually tried to make money in open source and related some actual experience of why it didn't work. Businesses actually don't give two sh*ts about being "tightly coupled" with a proprietary product. That's a sysadmin thing. It makes sense to the "us" of the world, but businesses don't care. Look at any area or field where billions or trillions of dollars worth of transactions still go through systems running on IBM iSeries, or mainframes. It's just the cost of doing business.
cableshaft 8y ago
I agree with this. That's why I avoid most web and SAAS platforms for things nowadays. I make an exception for things where I can get my data off their platform in a format I want pretty easily (i.e. I will use Google Docs because I can easily download the files as DOCX or PDF files) or the data I'm storing with them is mainly settings or preferences (I.e. Youtube knowing I'm subscribed to X publishers). I've been burned a few times and lost data just because a company goes out of business, or I decided I wanted to use a different platform and all my data from before was locked in to this other proprietary system. So yeah, if you're coming up with this hot new productivity/task software and I can't either download the data in an open format or at least use the software on the desktop, 100% offline? No thanks. And in general I hate subscriptions unless I'm getting access to libraries of content, i.e. Spotify, Netflix, or it's just for updates. By that I mean I get the software and a year's worth of updates when I paid for the license, and it's mine, you can't take access away from me, I have it for as long as I want, and I only pay again when I decide I use the software enough and the updates are compelling enough that I really want to update. Which is another reason why SAAS and Web apps don't really work for me, because they almost invariably charge a monthly fee and there's nothing to download so I just lose access the moment I stop paying. There are exceptions, but those are rare (mainly web hosting and cloud storage). It's for this reason why I refuse to pay for Adobe Suite, because you only have access for as long as you pay the monthly subscription. Screw that, my copy of Adobe Illustrator pre-subscription still gets the job done fine thanks. I might have upgraded by now if they hadn't switched to a subscription model, but now I'm going to keep using that as long as humanly possible, then search for an alternative.
- ghaff 8y ago
  In all fairness, the software that you buy today is almost certainly going to stop working at some point in the future as you upgrade your OS etc. So, unless you can download data into some reasonably open format, you will eventually lose access anyway. That said, I don't disagree with your basic point. In the case of Adobe, I use one of their programs fairly heavily. But most everything else is once in a blue moon. As a result, their Suite subscription doesn't work for me as I'm perfectly happy running something from a few versions back. Subscriptions only make sense for things you use pretty regularly.
TimJYoung 8y ago
Yes, but this is a symptom, not a cause, of a non-competitive market. You get stuck with only one option in markets where most of the other players have left the market because they can't figure out a way to make money in that market anymore. With competitive markets, switching costs are typically optimized away by the players that are interested in poaching one another's customers.

by tormeh 8y ago

youdontknowtho 8y ago

You really aren't replying to the person who actually tried to make money in open source and related some actual experience of why it didn't work. Businesses actually don't give two sh*ts about being "tightly coupled" with a proprietary product. That's a sysadmin thing. It makes sense to the "us" of the world, but businesses don't care. Look at any area or field where billions or trillions of dollars worth of transactions still go through systems running on IBM iSeries, or mainframes. It's just the cost of doing business.

cableshaft 8y ago

I agree with this. That's why I avoid most web and SAAS platforms for things nowadays. I make an exception for things where I can get my data off their platform in a format I want pretty easily (i.e. I will use Google Docs because I can easily download the files as DOCX or PDF files) or the data I'm storing with them is mainly settings or preferences (I.e. Youtube knowing I'm subscribed to X publishers). I've been burned a few times and lost data just because a company goes out of business, or I decided I wanted to use a different platform and all my data from before was locked in to this other proprietary system. So yeah, if you're coming up with this hot new productivity/task software and I can't either download the data in an open format or at least use the software on the desktop, 100% offline? No thanks. And in general I hate subscriptions unless I'm getting access to libraries of content, i.e. Spotify, Netflix, or it's just for updates. By that I mean I get the software and a year's worth of updates when I paid for the license, and it's mine, you can't take access away from me, I have it for as long as I want, and I only pay again when I decide I use the software enough and the updates are compelling enough that I really want to update. Which is another reason why SAAS and Web apps don't really work for me, because they almost invariably charge a monthly fee and there's nothing to download so I just lose access the moment I stop paying. There are exceptions, but those are rare (mainly web hosting and cloud storage). It's for this reason why I refuse to pay for Adobe Suite, because you only have access for as long as you pay the monthly subscription. Screw that, my copy of Adobe Illustrator pre-subscription still gets the job done fine thanks. I might have upgraded by now if they hadn't switched to a subscription model, but now I'm going to keep using that as long as humanly possible, then search for an alternative.

ghaff 8y ago
In all fairness, the software that you buy today is almost certainly going to stop working at some point in the future as you upgrade your OS etc. So, unless you can download data into some reasonably open format, you will eventually lose access anyway. That said, I don't disagree with your basic point. In the case of Adobe, I use one of their programs fairly heavily. But most everything else is once in a blue moon. As a result, their Suite subscription doesn't work for me as I'm perfectly happy running something from a few versions back. Subscriptions only make sense for things you use pretty regularly.

TimJYoung 8y ago

Yes, but this is a symptom, not a cause, of a non-competitive market. You get stuck with only one option in markets where most of the other players have left the market because they can't figure out a way to make money in that market anymore. With competitive markets, switching costs are typically optimized away by the players that are interested in poaching one another's customers.