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You live in a fancy apartment building that has a lobby with a concierge. The building isn't going to give the concierge $100,000 and tell them, okay keep comin

You live in a fancy apartment building that has a lobby with a concierge. The building isn't going to give the concierge $100,000 and tell them, okay keep coming back for the rest of your life. If the lobby of your building has a fancy chair in it, the furniture company isn't going to expect $10 a month forever to keep using it, and on the flip side, if the furniture turns out to be accidentally made of asbestos, it's the furniture company's responsibility to do something about that, regardless of the fact that you're not paying them every month. Is there a version of the concierge that's a one time purchase? Probably not a good one? The fee your paying is for 1. continued incentive to continue doing a good job and 2. Training and improvements to the staff. Is there a version of the chair that should be a recurring fee? Maybe if the chair company comes and swaps out the chair every month, but then you're not paying for the chair, you're paying for the chair service. Should the apartment building have the expectation that under a flat fee the fabric in the chair is going to get upgraded to fit new styles and tastes? No, that's never a expectation when you buy furniture. The only case where the manufacturer would be beholden to you would be if there is some gross defect in the product or if there was some negligence on their part that could lead to injury. Realistically there's not going to be an issue where a chair lets robbers in, but if you bought a door lock for example, and the lock failed when someone tapped it, you're not SOL because your not paying a subscription to the lock maker, they're liable for their defective product. There's absolutely cases where software should be a subscription model and there's absolutely cases where it shouldn't be. I don't need any features that have been added to Adobe Premiere since 2013. I don't want or need updates--my copy of CS6 still works. I'm not getting a CC subscription. If I needed software to help with accessibility compliance, I would absolutely be willing to pay a monthly fee because the standards change and information becomes out of date quickly. It would be an unreasonable expectation that a lump sum I paid in 2013 would still have my websites up to code today. -- Forgive typos, on my phone.

withinboredom 4y ago
> There's absolutely cases where software should be a subscription model and there's absolutely cases where it shouldn't be. My thoughts on this: 1. How long would it take a team of 4 people to build this with just the features I need for a single user? 2. How much would it cost to contract a team to build that (ball bark)? If it can be done on a single person's salary, I'm not paying a monthly subscription, no matter how inexpensive. I'm also not contracting that work either, but I might be tempted to compete with them if my employer let me (they won't). Only certain things make sense as a subscription, and those are things that have an infinite (or practically infinite) cost to the consumer, thus they should have an amortized infinite cost.
- spcebar 4y ago
  I've always thought about this in relation to the cost to the company rather than the consumer. I appreciate that different perspective. Do you think there's a case where something might have an infinite cost to the consumer but a finite cost to the company? Ie a solution to some recurring problem that, without the software or service the customer would endlessly pay for, but with the software or service would not incur the recurring cost--and in that situation, do you think it would be fair for the company to charge a recurring fee given that it's not costing them to continually develop it? So the customer is saving money compared to before they had the software but it's not supplementing a cost of development?
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    In those situations, it’s probably better to create an open source product that you sell support for. Customers that have the resources to build their own are also the customers who are willing to buy the closed source version until they can afford the time to replace it (auth0 cough). If you make it open source, those same companies would rather use what you’ve already built and probably contribute back to your project. The customers who could never afford to replace it will likely buy support for an open source version as well. Especially if you don’t advertise that it’s free (discourse) for a bit more work. You can also sell a hosted version for a subscription. Now you’ve set yourself up for a community to grow: core devs you pay, customers that contribute code and help diagnose bugs, customers that pay you only for support, and customers that pay you to do everything. I did this once, and the support-only customers were the most interesting. They helped locate latent race conditions that only appeared on underpowered hardware, but could happen on over-subscribed machines (like the hosted version), and so much more. I never got any contributions on the code side, but one guy randomly took over responding to issues without being asked to. By the time I got to them, it would be ready to close or I would have enough information to address it immediately. If you are going this route, just be aware that companies *will* eventually replace you with a home-grown solution. Even if it takes years. So ask yourself if you want to be the solution everyone goes to, you need an FOSS solution to give people. Otherwise, you’ll be replaced with the other ones, eventually. IOW, if a company like auth0 were to have an open source server, they’d be killing it everywhere. Five or six years ago. By now, there’s enough free (as in free speech) solutions out there that they will probably never be the default solution, just one that you pay for for a little while until you figure out how or have the time to host your own.

withinboredom 4y ago

> There's absolutely cases where software should be a subscription model and there's absolutely cases where it shouldn't be. My thoughts on this: 1. How long would it take a team of 4 people to build this with just the features I need for a single user? 2. How much would it cost to contract a team to build that (ball bark)? If it can be done on a single person's salary, I'm not paying a monthly subscription, no matter how inexpensive. I'm also not contracting that work either, but I might be tempted to compete with them if my employer let me (they won't). Only certain things make sense as a subscription, and those are things that have an infinite (or practically infinite) cost to the consumer, thus they should have an amortized infinite cost.

spcebar 4y ago
I've always thought about this in relation to the cost to the company rather than the consumer. I appreciate that different perspective. Do you think there's a case where something might have an infinite cost to the consumer but a finite cost to the company? Ie a solution to some recurring problem that, without the software or service the customer would endlessly pay for, but with the software or service would not incur the recurring cost--and in that situation, do you think it would be fair for the company to charge a recurring fee given that it's not costing them to continually develop it? So the customer is saving money compared to before they had the software but it's not supplementing a cost of development?
- withinboredom 4y ago
  In those situations, it’s probably better to create an open source product that you sell support for. Customers that have the resources to build their own are also the customers who are willing to buy the closed source version until they can afford the time to replace it (auth0 cough). If you make it open source, those same companies would rather use what you’ve already built and probably contribute back to your project. The customers who could never afford to replace it will likely buy support for an open source version as well. Especially if you don’t advertise that it’s free (discourse) for a bit more work. You can also sell a hosted version for a subscription. Now you’ve set yourself up for a community to grow: core devs you pay, customers that contribute code and help diagnose bugs, customers that pay you only for support, and customers that pay you to do everything. I did this once, and the support-only customers were the most interesting. They helped locate latent race conditions that only appeared on underpowered hardware, but could happen on over-subscribed machines (like the hosted version), and so much more. I never got any contributions on the code side, but one guy randomly took over responding to issues without being asked to. By the time I got to them, it would be ready to close or I would have enough information to address it immediately. If you are going this route, just be aware that companies *will* eventually replace you with a home-grown solution. Even if it takes years. So ask yourself if you want to be the solution everyone goes to, you need an FOSS solution to give people. Otherwise, you’ll be replaced with the other ones, eventually. IOW, if a company like auth0 were to have an open source server, they’d be killing it everywhere. Five or six years ago. By now, there’s enough free (as in free speech) solutions out there that they will probably never be the default solution, just one that you pay for for a little while until you figure out how or have the time to host your own.