4 ms·

Sounds like you should stick to FLOSS then. Anything you buy as SaaS can be canned, sold on or just become crap.

lubonay 6y ago
And even if it doesn't get sold/canned/broken, they can still change the EULA for any arbitrary reason.
Traster 6y ago
Your solution to being unhappy about potential losing a useful service is just to never use the service in the first place? How is that productive? Just because someone is upset about a service potentially going away doesn't mean they regret ever having used it.
loriverkutya 6y ago
FLOSS sadly does not solve my problem fully. I'm happy to pay for somebody to maintain the infrastructure and keep the service I'm using up to date on security issues. However if the maintainer happen to stop maintaining the service, I could setup the infrastructure and maintain it by myself with some learning, but that would take up more time I need to earn the money I'm paying to somebody else, who already done the groundwork and has the knowledge about the service. Also the service is worth $5-10 per month, but does not have enough value to worth the hassle of setting up the whole self hosted infra behind it and maintain it by myself. I'm not sure why, but people recommending FLOSS as a solution tends to forget about the additional cost to setup and maintain infrastructure and software and a simple build pipeline (even if it's just a bash script, rsyncing the code to a server) when mentioning you could self-host it if they shutdown the service. This is the "slightly annoying not to have this service, but not annoying enough to bother to replicate it even if I could" situation for me.
- iso1210 6y ago
  Free software isn't about money, it's about freedom. You value the freedom enough to complain when it's trodden on, but not enough to do the work required to continue to be free. Freedom has a price.
  - comboy 6y ago
    No. When you have to maintain the infrastructure you're a slave. Freedom is when I pay somebody to do it for me and move it elsewhere if I don't like it. I'm also tired of the trend of recommending FOSS when somebody is looking for a service. For personal solutions it works only if you are valuing your time really low or if you are having a lot of fun playing with it. Frankly, if you think setting up your own FOSS is often a good solution you haven't listened to your advice enough times. It works if you have a few things. But if you try to do it with everything you will just give up after a few years and 50 things set up this way, or you will spend considerate amount of time on maintenance (which is fine as long that's what you want to do with your life).
    - ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
      Don’t you think it’s a little hyperbolic to compare the ownership of human beings to running some software on your computer?
      - comboy 6y ago
        I agree, but it seems most practical to reply using the same framework that parent is using.
    - 1123581321 6y ago
      They were recommended FLOSS because they were histrionic about data ownership in a situation where the data was already out the door. It’s a way of presenting them with the fact that nothing reasonable can make them happy.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        Well, a company/product with steady service that wasn't created to be quickly sold, e.g. Basecamp, would make them happy...
    - save_ferris 6y ago
      > Freedom is when I pay somebody to do it for me and move it elsewhere if I don't like it. But you inherently have less control over the situation when you pick this option. Sure, it's convenient to pay someone else to manage the service, but you expose yourself to the acquisition situation that this user did. Also, moving to another provider isn't usually an easy thing to do, it's not like deciding to shop at Costco instead of Wal-mart today. Beyond the most trivial of services, you usually pay a fairly hefty technical migration cost to move to another provider. Most companies can't just wake up on a Monday and decide to switch from AWS to GCP or another cloud provider. I guess "Freedom" can mean different things to different people, but when you're at the mercy of a vendor like this, you're inherently less free than you would be if you ran your own service because you can't control what they do.
coldtea 6y ago
Similarly to anything you use that is FLOSS, which could have few devs and languish, teams with bizarro changes of direction, and so on. You just get the assurance that in the off chance somebody (including you) cares enough to maintain it, has the time, and is competent, they have have the license to do so. But that's not that big a deal, except if its a project with many diverse backers and large diverse community (e.g. something like MySQL or SQLite or even Webkit will survive and be forked if needed - something like the average 1-3 main dev project not so much).
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  This is a big ol thread but I think it is worth touching on software design. If an app can be a desktop app written in say JS (Java c# or similar term back-compat language) and not need “infra”. Or if it can be a Unix until that does one thing well. Then that is more likely to be a thing that can be forked and untouched for years and just work. Granted anything that interacts with web services may have bit rot. However solid principles may allow those parts of code to be surfaced out to plugins etc. Anyway let’s put it this way. I use YNAB 4 desktop budgeting software. No longer supported, not even FOSS and I’m not worried I can run that thing for the rest of my life, with little hassle, as long as I can run the last version of Windows that supports it in a VM.
jfoster 6y ago
I think this is a really interesting point, because I don't think FLOSS is quite the answer, either. If you just want a dependable service that's going to stay around, and you're willing to pay for it, what do you do? As you say, anything that is SaaS could be canned/sold/etc. Anything that's FLOSS won't be as much of a service as you wanted, presuming you wanted to pay money on an ongoing basis to have a problem solved in a convenient way.

And even if it doesn't get sold/canned/broken, they can still change the EULA for any arbitrary reason.

Your solution to being unhappy about potential losing a useful service is just to never use the service in the first place? How is that productive? Just because someone is upset about a service potentially going away doesn't mean they regret ever having used it.

loriverkutya 6y ago

FLOSS sadly does not solve my problem fully. I'm happy to pay for somebody to maintain the infrastructure and keep the service I'm using up to date on security issues. However if the maintainer happen to stop maintaining the service, I could setup the infrastructure and maintain it by myself with some learning, but that would take up more time I need to earn the money I'm paying to somebody else, who already done the groundwork and has the knowledge about the service. Also the service is worth $5-10 per month, but does not have enough value to worth the hassle of setting up the whole self hosted infra behind it and maintain it by myself. I'm not sure why, but people recommending FLOSS as a solution tends to forget about the additional cost to setup and maintain infrastructure and software and a simple build pipeline (even if it's just a bash script, rsyncing the code to a server) when mentioning you could self-host it if they shutdown the service. This is the "slightly annoying not to have this service, but not annoying enough to bother to replicate it even if I could" situation for me.

iso1210 6y ago
Free software isn't about money, it's about freedom. You value the freedom enough to complain when it's trodden on, but not enough to do the work required to continue to be free. Freedom has a price.
- comboy 6y ago
  No. When you have to maintain the infrastructure you're a slave. Freedom is when I pay somebody to do it for me and move it elsewhere if I don't like it. I'm also tired of the trend of recommending FOSS when somebody is looking for a service. For personal solutions it works only if you are valuing your time really low or if you are having a lot of fun playing with it. Frankly, if you think setting up your own FOSS is often a good solution you haven't listened to your advice enough times. It works if you have a few things. But if you try to do it with everything you will just give up after a few years and 50 things set up this way, or you will spend considerate amount of time on maintenance (which is fine as long that's what you want to do with your life).
  - ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
    Don’t you think it’s a little hyperbolic to compare the ownership of human beings to running some software on your computer?
    - comboy 6y ago
      I agree, but it seems most practical to reply using the same framework that parent is using.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    They were recommended FLOSS because they were histrionic about data ownership in a situation where the data was already out the door. It’s a way of presenting them with the fact that nothing reasonable can make them happy.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Well, a company/product with steady service that wasn't created to be quickly sold, e.g. Basecamp, would make them happy...
  - save_ferris 6y ago
    > Freedom is when I pay somebody to do it for me and move it elsewhere if I don't like it. But you inherently have less control over the situation when you pick this option. Sure, it's convenient to pay someone else to manage the service, but you expose yourself to the acquisition situation that this user did. Also, moving to another provider isn't usually an easy thing to do, it's not like deciding to shop at Costco instead of Wal-mart today. Beyond the most trivial of services, you usually pay a fairly hefty technical migration cost to move to another provider. Most companies can't just wake up on a Monday and decide to switch from AWS to GCP or another cloud provider. I guess "Freedom" can mean different things to different people, but when you're at the mercy of a vendor like this, you're inherently less free than you would be if you ran your own service because you can't control what they do.

coldtea 6y ago

Similarly to anything you use that is FLOSS, which could have few devs and languish, teams with bizarro changes of direction, and so on. You just get the assurance that in the off chance somebody (including you) cares enough to maintain it, has the time, and is competent, they have have the license to do so. But that's not that big a deal, except if its a project with many diverse backers and large diverse community (e.g. something like MySQL or SQLite or even Webkit will survive and be forked if needed - something like the average 1-3 main dev project not so much).

quickthrower2 6y ago
This is a big ol thread but I think it is worth touching on software design. If an app can be a desktop app written in say JS (Java c# or similar term back-compat language) and not need “infra”. Or if it can be a Unix until that does one thing well. Then that is more likely to be a thing that can be forked and untouched for years and just work. Granted anything that interacts with web services may have bit rot. However solid principles may allow those parts of code to be surfaced out to plugins etc. Anyway let’s put it this way. I use YNAB 4 desktop budgeting software. No longer supported, not even FOSS and I’m not worried I can run that thing for the rest of my life, with little hassle, as long as I can run the last version of Windows that supports it in a VM.

jfoster 6y ago

I think this is a really interesting point, because I don't think FLOSS is quite the answer, either. If you just want a dependable service that's going to stay around, and you're willing to pay for it, what do you do? As you say, anything that is SaaS could be canned/sold/etc. Anything that's FLOSS won't be as much of a service as you wanted, presuming you wanted to pay money on an ongoing basis to have a problem solved in a convenient way.