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I disagree - as a vendor I think you should charge based on the value you provide to users, not the costs to run your service. That is to say I don’t think desk

I disagree - as a vendor I think you should charge based on the value you provide to users, not the costs to run your service. That is to say I don’t think desktop software needs to have a “cloud” piece to it to make it valuable enough to users to justify an annual charge. Users don’t usually care where your app or service runs, just that it solves their pain points quickly and easily. The question then becomes how you justify that charge, but I think you can legitimately say support and/or new feature development (especially if you allow customers to have some kind of input into that). Having guaranteed support from a company with the technical chops that Andy has would be worth it alone for me in this instance. Jetbrains have an interesting model with their IDE’s whereby you can fallback to a perpetual desktop license for their products if you don’t want support or updates. Perhaps that’s a nice compromise option.

brushfoot 7y ago
> you should charge based on the value you provide to users Yes, but not infinitely, not for a static product. Otherwise I should also be willing to accept infinite punishment for whatever harm my product does as long as it exists. If I create a hammer, it could still be generating value in a hundred years, but it could also be used to break windows and kill people. So if I deserve continuous payment, shouldn't I also be liable for the damages? Why should I be infinitely rewarded just because my tool had the potential to add value when it also had the potential to do harm? > Having guaranteed support [...] would be worth it I agree with you there. But I think it should be optional. It sounds like that's what JetBrains is doing, albeit in a roundabout way.