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> Subscriptions allow companies to better develop organic roadmaps that's not tied to an upgrade cycle This point is at the center of the move to subscriptions

> Subscriptions allow companies to better develop organic roadmaps that's not tied to an upgrade cycle This point is at the center of the move to subscriptions, and I think we should be more explicit that we want companies to eventually _not_ significantly upgrade products and keep them alive with minimal changes for a long time, while we're still paying for subscriptions. It I think really important to lower the pressure on companies to have a constant flow of updates every month just to justify to users the money they're paying for. That would bring the old "one big revision every year" cycle to a more severe "meaningless small updates every months". The roadblock is of course customers wondering why they're still paying every month for a product that sees little change, and I don't have an answer to that, except the alternative had other issues as well.

xg15 4y ago
> This point is at the center of the move to subscriptions, and I think we should be more explicit that we want companies to eventually _not_ significantly upgrade products and keep them alive with minimal changes for a long time, while we're still paying for subscriptions. How is that different from rent-seeking? In particular, what does "keep the software alive" mean? I can understand that cloud services have a fixed cost of upkeep. I can understand that less so for software that runs on my own pc. > The roadblock is of course customers wondering why they're still paying every month for a product that sees little change, and I don't have an answer to that, except the alternative had other issues as well. That question is not that dumb. If you don't want any meaningful change to your software, why do you care that the company still exists? You might just as well have an old version that still works, whether or not the company is still maintaining it. So yeah, in that situation, apart from the occasional security fix, I really wouldn't know what I'm paying for.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Yes, the question of paying upfront or sustaining a subscription isn’t simple. I refuse to pay for Adobe CS and keep an old Lightroom license around when needed, but pay for Bitwarden just to keep them around for security updates and new OS support, and absolutely don’t want them to add new flashy features every month. There’s no one size fits all I think.

xg15 4y ago

> This point is at the center of the move to subscriptions, and I think we should be more explicit that we want companies to eventually _not_ significantly upgrade products and keep them alive with minimal changes for a long time, while we're still paying for subscriptions. How is that different from rent-seeking? In particular, what does "keep the software alive" mean? I can understand that cloud services have a fixed cost of upkeep. I can understand that less so for software that runs on my own pc. > The roadblock is of course customers wondering why they're still paying every month for a product that sees little change, and I don't have an answer to that, except the alternative had other issues as well. That question is not that dumb. If you don't want any meaningful change to your software, why do you care that the company still exists? You might just as well have an old version that still works, whether or not the company is still maintaining it. So yeah, in that situation, apart from the occasional security fix, I really wouldn't know what I'm paying for.

makeitdouble 4y ago
Yes, the question of paying upfront or sustaining a subscription isn’t simple. I refuse to pay for Adobe CS and keep an old Lightroom license around when needed, but pay for Bitwarden just to keep them around for security updates and new OS support, and absolutely don’t want them to add new flashy features every month. There’s no one size fits all I think.