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Eric S raymond had a different way to explain this: Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a m

Eric S raymond had a different way to explain this: Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

simonh 5y ago
Simply having customers incurs costs in support. The more customers you have the more different hardware and OS patch and ancillary software configurations your app is running on, the more uses your app it put to, the more problematic edge cases in the UI and functionality and bugs will be encountered, the more feature requests you will get, the higher the chance that old versions of your app will be in use for longer. Eric's exactly right, you're providing a service and service costs scale up with users. Not all of them linearly, but some for sure.
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
It used to be manufacturing, back when you'd ship a cardboard box to a store once a year. I think the delusion we have today is that the internet-enabled model is somehow superior. It just seems to introduce more problems, and forces companies to expend a much greater amount of money, effort, and maintenance to get the same result consistently. I feel like the next great revolution will be selling updated software only once a year. No privacy implications, no persistent security concerns, no data hoarding, no advertising, no connectivity issues, no addictive social gamification or micro-payment or subscription service. Just a fully-functioning rock-solid program on your local device, developed by a small team, sold to millions of people. I'd pay premium for that!
- coldcode 5y ago
  My first product in 1987 sold in boxes, with floppies that had to be duplicated and a manual printed, plus shipping to distributors and mail order companies. If we were lucky we got paid 180 days later assuming they were sold, otherwise we had to pay to get the unsold inventory back. A later product with a larger audience cost $10 just to send an update, and that had very little profit, since it required all the same manufacturing costs. I never did that again.
- gbear605 5y ago
  That’s basically how IntelliJ (and the other JetBrain IDEs) work. They market it as a subscription, but after you’ve been subscribed for a year you get an key that lasts forever for the version that you initially subscribed to. Subscription years after the first (so basically, choosing to upgrade from the initial version) are cheaper than the first year. It would be nice if they chose to have an option to just buy a version outright without the appearance of a subscription, but I understand why they don’t.

Eric S raymond had a different way to explain this: Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

simonh 5y ago

Simply having customers incurs costs in support. The more customers you have the more different hardware and OS patch and ancillary software configurations your app is running on, the more uses your app it put to, the more problematic edge cases in the UI and functionality and bugs will be encountered, the more feature requests you will get, the higher the chance that old versions of your app will be in use for longer. Eric's exactly right, you're providing a service and service costs scale up with users. Not all of them linearly, but some for sure.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

It used to be manufacturing, back when you'd ship a cardboard box to a store once a year. I think the delusion we have today is that the internet-enabled model is somehow superior. It just seems to introduce more problems, and forces companies to expend a much greater amount of money, effort, and maintenance to get the same result consistently. I feel like the next great revolution will be selling updated software only once a year. No privacy implications, no persistent security concerns, no data hoarding, no advertising, no connectivity issues, no addictive social gamification or micro-payment or subscription service. Just a fully-functioning rock-solid program on your local device, developed by a small team, sold to millions of people. I'd pay premium for that!

coldcode 5y ago
My first product in 1987 sold in boxes, with floppies that had to be duplicated and a manual printed, plus shipping to distributors and mail order companies. If we were lucky we got paid 180 days later assuming they were sold, otherwise we had to pay to get the unsold inventory back. A later product with a larger audience cost $10 just to send an update, and that had very little profit, since it required all the same manufacturing costs. I never did that again.
gbear605 5y ago
That’s basically how IntelliJ (and the other JetBrain IDEs) work. They market it as a subscription, but after you’ve been subscribed for a year you get an key that lasts forever for the version that you initially subscribed to. Subscription years after the first (so basically, choosing to upgrade from the initial version) are cheaper than the first year. It would be nice if they chose to have an option to just buy a version outright without the appearance of a subscription, but I understand why they don’t.