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>Nobody asked for subscriptions. Nobody likes them That's patently false I, for one, happen to like being able to push costs from capex to opex (and yes, that

>Nobody asked for subscriptions. Nobody likes them That's patently false I, for one, happen to like being able to push costs from capex to opex (and yes, that's true for my own personal use like it is for business use) *for most things) - a subscription price gives me a closer approximation of a given tool's/service's value proposition than does a one-off purchase (most of the time) Everything from car leases (albeit I typically purchase my cars, leases most definitely have their place for a significant portion of vehicle operators) to Netflix fees come in the form of a "subscription" - follow the terms of the subscription, and you get to use whatever it is as long as you want

willis936 5y ago
Leasing vs. ownership of cars is a great example of having a choice between ownership and a service. About 1/3 of cars are leased rather than owned. I should say your choice to subscribe should not be taken away. I don't think my choice to own should be taken away.
- warrenm 5y ago
  The example breaks-down (no pun intended) on cars, though: software is likely not usable after 3-5 years (the length of a normal car lease) Cars are typically usable for well over a decade :)
  - willis936 5y ago
    My Acrobat 9.0 is getting pretty long in the tooth. I still run it on occasion, but there are more issues with DPI scaling and new PDF features. It looks like Adobe does sell one-time purchases of Acrobat Pro 2020 for $450. I'll cease my cloud-yelling.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    > software is likely not usable after 3-5 years Whoa whoa wait! How did we get to this point? Maybe I’m living in the past, but software should work essentially forever. There are no moving parts. No wear/maintenance items. It doesn't distort like a photocopy when loaded to and from media. The only thing that should cause working software to fail is some underlying change to its foundation: an incompatible OS or browser change or deprecated API, and so on, and we should hold platform vendors accountable for regressions and breakage. I wish platforms took backward compatibility seriously. Apart from a cosmic ray flipping a bit somewhere, there is no physics reason software should “wear out.” How did this become a fringe point of view?
    - warrenm 5y ago
      >software should work essentially forever Really? You're still running operating systems that are a decade old on hardware even older? Why?
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        The newer versions of OSes aren't supposed to break compatibility, and in fact they really don't. The really old programs run in emulators. This is how I play 1980s video games. I highly recommend Mario Brothers (not "Super") from 1983. Still works.
        doctor_eval 5y ago
        But has it worked continuously on contemporary platforms for the entire period of its existence? I reckon there were many years between the retirement of the original platform and your ability to emulate that platform. The point is that software should remain usable, but in your example that hasn’t been the case.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        No, but that's because it's from 1983. It's only modern machines that have this awesome excess of power. Apple did Rosetta in 2006. That proves this approach has been _commercially_ viable on top-end machines for at least 15 years. Not 39 years!
      - kokekolo 5y ago
        I own Lightroom 4.0 from 2012 (that's 10 years ago). It doesn't have the latest features, but it's still a very capable RAW processing software. I don't use it anymore because I've subscribed to the current Lightroom. I've subscribed last year, because (finally!) the new features were compelling enough for me. The old version still works well, even on latest-ish macOS. It still produces great pictures now, as it did 10 years ago. 10 years is not that long ago. In computers and software the difference between 2022 and 2012 is not as big as it was between 1992 and 2002.
jodrellblank 5y ago
> follow the terms of the subscription, and you get to use whatever it is as long as you want But you can run software you bought with capex as long as you want and it doesn’t cost more forever. And you don’t have to agree to new terms and conditions.
- warrenm 5y ago
  >But you can run software you bought with capex as long as you want and it doesn’t cost more forever. ...only if you still have hardware and operating systems that support it (or that it supports, depending on your point of view)

willis936 5y ago

Leasing vs. ownership of cars is a great example of having a choice between ownership and a service. About 1/3 of cars are leased rather than owned. I should say your choice to subscribe should not be taken away. I don't think my choice to own should be taken away.

warrenm 5y ago
The example breaks-down (no pun intended) on cars, though: software is likely not usable after 3-5 years (the length of a normal car lease) Cars are typically usable for well over a decade :)
- willis936 5y ago
  My Acrobat 9.0 is getting pretty long in the tooth. I still run it on occasion, but there are more issues with DPI scaling and new PDF features. It looks like Adobe does sell one-time purchases of Acrobat Pro 2020 for $450. I'll cease my cloud-yelling.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  > software is likely not usable after 3-5 years Whoa whoa wait! How did we get to this point? Maybe I’m living in the past, but software should work essentially forever. There are no moving parts. No wear/maintenance items. It doesn't distort like a photocopy when loaded to and from media. The only thing that should cause working software to fail is some underlying change to its foundation: an incompatible OS or browser change or deprecated API, and so on, and we should hold platform vendors accountable for regressions and breakage. I wish platforms took backward compatibility seriously. Apart from a cosmic ray flipping a bit somewhere, there is no physics reason software should “wear out.” How did this become a fringe point of view?
  - warrenm 5y ago
    >software should work essentially forever Really? You're still running operating systems that are a decade old on hardware even older? Why?
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      The newer versions of OSes aren't supposed to break compatibility, and in fact they really don't. The really old programs run in emulators. This is how I play 1980s video games. I highly recommend Mario Brothers (not "Super") from 1983. Still works.
      - doctor_eval 5y ago
        But has it worked continuously on contemporary platforms for the entire period of its existence? I reckon there were many years between the retirement of the original platform and your ability to emulate that platform. The point is that software should remain usable, but in your example that hasn’t been the case.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        No, but that's because it's from 1983. It's only modern machines that have this awesome excess of power. Apple did Rosetta in 2006. That proves this approach has been _commercially_ viable on top-end machines for at least 15 years. Not 39 years!
    - kokekolo 5y ago
      I own Lightroom 4.0 from 2012 (that's 10 years ago). It doesn't have the latest features, but it's still a very capable RAW processing software. I don't use it anymore because I've subscribed to the current Lightroom. I've subscribed last year, because (finally!) the new features were compelling enough for me. The old version still works well, even on latest-ish macOS. It still produces great pictures now, as it did 10 years ago. 10 years is not that long ago. In computers and software the difference between 2022 and 2012 is not as big as it was between 1992 and 2002.

jodrellblank 5y ago

> follow the terms of the subscription, and you get to use whatever it is as long as you want But you can run software you bought with capex as long as you want and it doesn’t cost more forever. And you don’t have to agree to new terms and conditions.

warrenm 5y ago
>But you can run software you bought with capex as long as you want and it doesn’t cost more forever. ...only if you still have hardware and operating systems that support it (or that it supports, depending on your point of view)