5 ms·

I don’t really understand SaaS for such mature products. My work (woodworking) is about making pieces of furniture. Using software is only a part of the proce

I don’t really understand SaaS for such mature products. My work (woodworking) is about making pieces of furniture. Using software is only a part of the process. It is not the actual goal. I want to pay a one off price for a stable and feature complete tool. I don’t want to fund a bunch of developers noodling around with new features I don’t want, or fixing bugs they should be patching anyway, as part of the original price of the software.

rini17 6y ago
You have chosen the tool which is not actually owned by you and does not have good substitution from another vendor. No wonder you have exposed yourself to rent-seeking and other things you don't want. It's not a situation that can be solved by individual, I know. But a profession as a collective should group around open tools.
- sitkack 6y ago
  These 50 architectural firms should pool their money and create an Open Source Design Lab that can do for architecture and building construction what https://www.khronos.org/ https://www.khronos.org/ has done for 3d. I had the idea to create a company that helps organizations create these niche open source governance structures. While I love the result (more open source), I have no business or non-profit skills, and it sounds like a hard boring job. I do recommend someone explore this space, who knows it might not be that difficult.
numpad0 6y ago
They want to establish a steady income for a stable and feature complete tool. They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy, or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway, as reasons why subscriptions cost the price they charge.
- asiachick 6y ago
  > They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway That's what $$$ upgrades are for. No need for a subscription if I'm happy without the new features and happy using it on an old OS. I'm happy to pay for new features I might actually use. I'm happy to pay for upgrades for a new OS. As an example though, I used to get by upgrading Adobe Photoshop at most about once every 4 years at a cost of about $200 or $50 a year. Now they extract out of me $480 ($120 a year) for features I don't actually use. In fact I'm pretty sure I use zero features past CS2 (2003) and like I said was fine paying them $200 every 4 years for the OS upgrades but now I just feel taken advantage off. Unfortunately yes, I've tried the alternatives and PS is still the best by many measures so I'm stuck paying for nothing but permission to use the software.
  - nomercy400 6y ago
    Why not keep using CS2 (or up to CS5), if you are not using newer features?
    - clusterfish 6y ago
      Not the op but whenever I have similar gripes it's because the old version is no longer maintained and eventually breaks after an OS upgrade.
    - omnimus 6y ago
      Because it doesnt work on current os (on mac atleast). Also adobe started to expect that you always have most current software so opening any file without current verion so working with others is no no.
    - detritus 6y ago
      Because I can't open files from clients who use a newer version than I do - with the 2020 illy update particularly schisming matters.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    The problem, from shareholders point of view, is that upgrades don't allow for continuous growth and with time, as the potential user base is already covered, it makes very hard to keep that revenue coming in. So unless you want to see your beloved products die at version X, or them ramping down the teams for maintenance mode, subscriptions are the only way to get them going.
BjoernKW 6y ago
That’s a valid request. However, continued support or bug fixes in that case might require a much higher upfront price than the one you might be used to. While it’s easy to blame the developers of a product for real or perceived flaws, even if operated entirely offline software products interact with their environment. Hence, a bug you’re having might be due to an operating system update, another third-party application, or even a specific hardware configuration. I’d want the software company in question to be motivated to investigate and - if possible - fix the issue nonetheless, even if the underlying cause of the issue isn’t their fault.
- clusterfish 6y ago
  I'm not against subscription pricing in principle, but in practice newly introduced subscription pricing pretty much always ends up being significantly more expensive than original pricing, and that's just greed. Also there is often no longer an option to stop paying and just continue using your version, even if you've been paying for the subscription for years. Or they only let you use an old version so you'll need to actually downgrade if you stop paying. This innovation in user hostility I first encountered with Jetbrains.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    Funny you mention JetBrains, they have the best subscription model of any software company I have used. You pay a yearly fee to get the latest stuff within that year and you can use the current or any previous version forever if you stop paying. There was a bit of mob forming with JetBrains first announced the subscription model and the current one developed by working with their customers. This subscription model, combined with the largely open source codebase for their products means I'll probably be paying JetBrains for the rest of my life.
    - clusterfish 6y ago
      https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-a-perpetual-fallback-license- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... If you don't renew your annual subscription, the latest version you have installed stops working and you have to downgrade to a one year old version. Just another way they lock you in to continue paying. Who in their right mind would willingly downgrade the software they're using.
taneq 6y ago
> I want to pay a one off price for a stable and feature complete tool. I don’t want to fund a bunch of developers noodling around with new features I don’t want, or fixing bugs they should be patching anyway, as part of the original price of the software. Of course you do. So do I! However, the bunch of developers wants you to fund them noodling around indefinitely, and sadly they're the ones that choose the business model. If only FreeCAD had a UI as approachable as Fusion 360...
- david_draco 6y ago
  > If only FreeCAD had a UI as approachable as Fusion 360... You could pay a random professional software company to improve the FreeCAD UI.
  - adventured 6y ago
    > You could pay a random professional software company to improve the FreeCAD UI. Software develoment is of course quite difficult. Good software development is that much harder. Sure, you could pay a company to try to improve the FreeCAD UI - you could pay a company a lot of money to botch the effort, deliver a mediocre outcome, take a zillion years to finish, go far over budget it while still getting a mediocre outcome, and so on. If it's anything other than a good outcome, most likely you just stole resources from the rest of your business and now you're worse off. The odds are against you. It's one of the many reasons people stick with their 75% or 85% good enough present solution. They're busy running their own business. Trying to manage a software development endeavor on the side is a huge tax (that much more so if you're not in the software business).
    - taneq 6y ago
      > It's one of the many reasons people stick with their 75% or 85% good enough present solution. 100% this. That's one thing many people don't realise until they run a business - there are so many things which MUST be done, all the time, just to keep the lights on. When you do get a rare gap in those, you're better off developing and improving your core product than indulging yourself by spending resources on some unrelated nice-to-have.
fsloth 6y ago
Large AEC clients actually prefer subscriptions. It's OPEX vs CAPEX. Purchasing a license comes with a huge CAPEX cost, while paying a monthly fee is OPEX so looks much less scary in the budget.
- syshum 6y ago
  I always love comments like these, Having been through this cycle a few times at different companies, the bean counters always love OPEX until you move everything to OPEX causing that annual budget to explode then all of a sudden they want to "Reduce costs", so people start shifting things to CAPEX until that budget explodes then they want to "Reduce annual capital spend" so people start shifting thing back to opex..... And so the cycle goes, over and over again bean counters and MBA's live in this mythical land where $100,000 over 5 years or $20,000 a year is some how different
  - krewast 6y ago
    > bean counters and MBA's live in this mythical land where $100,000 over 5 years or $20,000 a year is some how different There are differences and they are far from mythical! A big one: Liquidity. If you spend $100,000 today, you all of a sudden have a $100,000 less in your bank account. That may limit what you and your team can do this year - because budgets are finite. If you have the option to pay $20,000 each year over 5 years your liquidity goes down by that amount each year. Much easier to plan and usually less risky. Another one: Flexiblity. If you don't need the product or service after year 3 any more, stop it. You paid $60,000 instead of $100,000. Less. Money. Spent. (And yes, it also goes into the other direction (pay more than $100,000 if you use it longer) but that's a trade off many businesses are willing to make. 5 years is a long time, things change.) Last but not least: Opportunity costs. Paying $100,000 at once is expensive because it means you can't invest the money into something else that generates interest. If you pay $20,000 each year it means, that you still have $80,000 in the first year, $60,000 in the second and so on. Use this remaining money to invest it into something that creates interest for you (bank account, stocks, index fund, ...). That's another win! (And also the reason why big companies pay their bills as late as possible - it adds up for them!)
Dirlewanger 6y ago
It's all about bilking customers. It's the natural endgame for capitalism. Same idea with planned obsolesence. It's why big ticket items like washing machines and fridges last a fraction of the length as their counterparts from 60 years ago.
austhrow743 6y ago
Do you want it enough to not only pay as an upfront price what your lifetime value would have been as a subscription customer, but also cover the difference from other people being unwilling to? A lot of people will subscribe for $50/month for something they'll be using for the next 5 years but won't pay anywhere near $3000 for it. Particularly for work, where smaller monthly purchases are a lot less hassle to make than big once off purchases. It can be the difference between chucking it on the work credit card and having to go through the purchasing people.

rini17 6y ago

You have chosen the tool which is not actually owned by you and does not have good substitution from another vendor. No wonder you have exposed yourself to rent-seeking and other things you don't want. It's not a situation that can be solved by individual, I know. But a profession as a collective should group around open tools.

sitkack 6y ago
These 50 architectural firms should pool their money and create an Open Source Design Lab that can do for architecture and building construction what https://www.khronos.org/ https://www.khronos.org/ has done for 3d. I had the idea to create a company that helps organizations create these niche open source governance structures. While I love the result (more open source), I have no business or non-profit skills, and it sounds like a hard boring job. I do recommend someone explore this space, who knows it might not be that difficult.

numpad0 6y ago

They want to establish a steady income for a stable and feature complete tool. They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy, or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway, as reasons why subscriptions cost the price they charge.

asiachick 6y ago
> They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway That's what $$$ upgrades are for. No need for a subscription if I'm happy without the new features and happy using it on an old OS. I'm happy to pay for new features I might actually use. I'm happy to pay for upgrades for a new OS. As an example though, I used to get by upgrading Adobe Photoshop at most about once every 4 years at a cost of about $200 or $50 a year. Now they extract out of me $480 ($120 a year) for features I don't actually use. In fact I'm pretty sure I use zero features past CS2 (2003) and like I said was fine paying them $200 every 4 years for the OS upgrades but now I just feel taken advantage off. Unfortunately yes, I've tried the alternatives and PS is still the best by many measures so I'm stuck paying for nothing but permission to use the software.
- nomercy400 6y ago
  Why not keep using CS2 (or up to CS5), if you are not using newer features?
  - clusterfish 6y ago
    Not the op but whenever I have similar gripes it's because the old version is no longer maintained and eventually breaks after an OS upgrade.
  - omnimus 6y ago
    Because it doesnt work on current os (on mac atleast). Also adobe started to expect that you always have most current software so opening any file without current verion so working with others is no no.
  - detritus 6y ago
    Because I can't open files from clients who use a newer version than I do - with the 2020 illy update particularly schisming matters.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  The problem, from shareholders point of view, is that upgrades don't allow for continuous growth and with time, as the potential user base is already covered, it makes very hard to keep that revenue coming in. So unless you want to see your beloved products die at version X, or them ramping down the teams for maintenance mode, subscriptions are the only way to get them going.

BjoernKW 6y ago

That’s a valid request. However, continued support or bug fixes in that case might require a much higher upfront price than the one you might be used to. While it’s easy to blame the developers of a product for real or perceived flaws, even if operated entirely offline software products interact with their environment. Hence, a bug you’re having might be due to an operating system update, another third-party application, or even a specific hardware configuration. I’d want the software company in question to be motivated to investigate and - if possible - fix the issue nonetheless, even if the underlying cause of the issue isn’t their fault.

clusterfish 6y ago
I'm not against subscription pricing in principle, but in practice newly introduced subscription pricing pretty much always ends up being significantly more expensive than original pricing, and that's just greed. Also there is often no longer an option to stop paying and just continue using your version, even if you've been paying for the subscription for years. Or they only let you use an old version so you'll need to actually downgrade if you stop paying. This innovation in user hostility I first encountered with Jetbrains.
- sitkack 6y ago
  Funny you mention JetBrains, they have the best subscription model of any software company I have used. You pay a yearly fee to get the latest stuff within that year and you can use the current or any previous version forever if you stop paying. There was a bit of mob forming with JetBrains first announced the subscription model and the current one developed by working with their customers. This subscription model, combined with the largely open source codebase for their products means I'll probably be paying JetBrains for the rest of my life.
  - clusterfish 6y ago
    https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-a-perpetual-fallback-license- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... If you don't renew your annual subscription, the latest version you have installed stops working and you have to downgrade to a one year old version. Just another way they lock you in to continue paying. Who in their right mind would willingly downgrade the software they're using.

taneq 6y ago

> I want to pay a one off price for a stable and feature complete tool. I don’t want to fund a bunch of developers noodling around with new features I don’t want, or fixing bugs they should be patching anyway, as part of the original price of the software. Of course you do. So do I! However, the bunch of developers wants you to fund them noodling around indefinitely, and sadly they're the ones that choose the business model. If only FreeCAD had a UI as approachable as Fusion 360...

david_draco 6y ago
> If only FreeCAD had a UI as approachable as Fusion 360... You could pay a random professional software company to improve the FreeCAD UI.
- adventured 6y ago
  > You could pay a random professional software company to improve the FreeCAD UI. Software develoment is of course quite difficult. Good software development is that much harder. Sure, you could pay a company to try to improve the FreeCAD UI - you could pay a company a lot of money to botch the effort, deliver a mediocre outcome, take a zillion years to finish, go far over budget it while still getting a mediocre outcome, and so on. If it's anything other than a good outcome, most likely you just stole resources from the rest of your business and now you're worse off. The odds are against you. It's one of the many reasons people stick with their 75% or 85% good enough present solution. They're busy running their own business. Trying to manage a software development endeavor on the side is a huge tax (that much more so if you're not in the software business).
  - taneq 6y ago
    > It's one of the many reasons people stick with their 75% or 85% good enough present solution. 100% this. That's one thing many people don't realise until they run a business - there are so many things which MUST be done, all the time, just to keep the lights on. When you do get a rare gap in those, you're better off developing and improving your core product than indulging yourself by spending resources on some unrelated nice-to-have.

fsloth 6y ago

Large AEC clients actually prefer subscriptions. It's OPEX vs CAPEX. Purchasing a license comes with a huge CAPEX cost, while paying a monthly fee is OPEX so looks much less scary in the budget.

syshum 6y ago
I always love comments like these, Having been through this cycle a few times at different companies, the bean counters always love OPEX until you move everything to OPEX causing that annual budget to explode then all of a sudden they want to "Reduce costs", so people start shifting things to CAPEX until that budget explodes then they want to "Reduce annual capital spend" so people start shifting thing back to opex..... And so the cycle goes, over and over again bean counters and MBA's live in this mythical land where $100,000 over 5 years or $20,000 a year is some how different
- krewast 6y ago
  > bean counters and MBA's live in this mythical land where $100,000 over 5 years or $20,000 a year is some how different There are differences and they are far from mythical! A big one: Liquidity. If you spend $100,000 today, you all of a sudden have a $100,000 less in your bank account. That may limit what you and your team can do this year - because budgets are finite. If you have the option to pay $20,000 each year over 5 years your liquidity goes down by that amount each year. Much easier to plan and usually less risky. Another one: Flexiblity. If you don't need the product or service after year 3 any more, stop it. You paid $60,000 instead of $100,000. Less. Money. Spent. (And yes, it also goes into the other direction (pay more than $100,000 if you use it longer) but that's a trade off many businesses are willing to make. 5 years is a long time, things change.) Last but not least: Opportunity costs. Paying $100,000 at once is expensive because it means you can't invest the money into something else that generates interest. If you pay $20,000 each year it means, that you still have $80,000 in the first year, $60,000 in the second and so on. Use this remaining money to invest it into something that creates interest for you (bank account, stocks, index fund, ...). That's another win! (And also the reason why big companies pay their bills as late as possible - it adds up for them!)

Dirlewanger 6y ago

It's all about bilking customers. It's the natural endgame for capitalism. Same idea with planned obsolesence. It's why big ticket items like washing machines and fridges last a fraction of the length as their counterparts from 60 years ago.

austhrow743 6y ago

Do you want it enough to not only pay as an upfront price what your lifetime value would have been as a subscription customer, but also cover the difference from other people being unwilling to? A lot of people will subscribe for $50/month for something they'll be using for the next 5 years but won't pay anywhere near $3000 for it. Particularly for work, where smaller monthly purchases are a lot less hassle to make than big once off purchases. It can be the difference between chucking it on the work credit card and having to go through the purchasing people.