4 ms·

I bought Little Snitch long ago but managed to squander my license a couple of years later. Mini is unfortunately a subscription app, which is something I these

I bought Little Snitch long ago but managed to squander my license a couple of years later. Mini is unfortunately a subscription app, which is something I these days consider a hostile/unfriendly business pattern. I won't be going back. LuLu is a free alternative.

keyle 4y ago
Using LuLu for so long I actually forgot that I have it running! +1 for LuLu.
hayst4ck 4y ago
I generally agree with you so I looked it up. In-App Purchases: Yearly Subscription $13.49 Monthly Subscription $1.49 That's surprisingly modest. 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable. The real question is, is little snitch rent seeking? Given what happened after Catalina, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt at the moment. Paying for updates before receiving them definitely creates a conflict of interest. Having looked at their website and seeing SKU-ification (Cutting a product different ways to try to hit different price points) and other business over product decisions, I am definitely feeling shaky about the future of little snitch. SKU-ification is 10x the red flag that a subscription model is. It's worth considering that viruses now days will check and see if programs like this are running and then delete themselves rather than execute the payload.
- latexr 4y ago
  > 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable. Which is probably why the apps on the App Store which offer both subscription and lifetime pricing tend to have the latter at about 3 times the cost of the former. But Little Snitch Mini does not offer that choice. I’d be willing to pay more than 40$ for a one-time purchase of Little Snitch Mini, but there’s zero chance I’ll do it as a subscription.
  - hayst4ck 4y ago
    I see both sides. This dilemma is capitalist hell. Why is obdev sku-ifying their product? Because the incentive model for selling a license means that the market can saturate and there is a lack of recurring or stable income/income safety for the dev. In order to get new spikes of income, a new product is generated. If the market for a particular license becomes saturated, how will they make more money? Licensed based sales incentivizes creation of new product and disincentivizes incremental improvements on already complete products. On the other hand, subscription models incentivize rent seeking. If money is coming in, there is no reason to do more work. Income is not dependent in any way for work done, except maybe compatibility adjustments. So a license is a wonderful model for the buyer and not so great for the seller. A subscription is awful for the buyer, but too good for the seller. So what kind of payment method/pricing scheme, keeps the developer engaged in improving the product, but doesn't incentivize rent-seeking? How would you price things if you were the seller?
    - mhb 4y ago
      Jetbrains' model?
      - hayst4ck 4y ago
        If anyone else was wondering what the model was: https://www.jetbrains.com/store/#personal?billing=monthly https://www.jetbrains.com/store/#personal?billing=monthly https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-perpetual-fallback-license- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... Perpetual fallback license means that if you stop paying for a subscription, you can keep using the version you are on, in perpetuity. Sounds fairly reasonable. If there are no updates, you would cancel your subscription and use the fallback license until the "rent-seeking" stops.
        Aldo_MX 4y ago
        I'm not sure if the Jetbrains model backfired with the Ukraine war, considering most of the dev team was Russian and they decided to close the Russian offices. I remember that the launch of the 2022 versions had a drop in quality, I don't remember when was the last time I had crashes in a Jetbrains product, but with the launch of 2022 versions crashes occurred on a daily basis to the point I really considered cancelling my subscription, and I activated for the first time the option to block updates in Jetbrains Toolbox. Months later they launched their promotion to keep the current pricing for 3 more years and I renewed. I acknowledge that promotion was a genius move by them, but I'm unsure if that promotion was a result of a drop in income for them.
- whynaut 4y ago
  From their 'Compare' page, it seems like they are targeting entirely different kinds of users, not price points.
- Cort3z 4y ago
  > It's worth considering that viruses now days will check and see if programs like this are running and then delete themselves rather than execute the payload. Wait, is this true? Do you have any resources backing this up. This would be a good protection mechanism if you can distill it to the minimum footprint to trigger this self destruct on viruses.
  - hayst4ck 4y ago
    For windows it is true. I don't know if there are mainstream osx trojans, but I don't see why they wouldn't have the same behavior. There are services like crowdstrike where you can upload a trojan, it will then run the trojan in a VM to try to see what it does. In response, trojans try to detect if the system they are on is a vm and if it has sufficient power (lots of ram, lots of cpu, age of installation/uptime) rather than minimal power as well as try to detect of the machine is capable of malware analysis or detecting it through installed tools (is python installed, etc.). From first hand experience manually reverse engineering some e-mail trojans for fun, I can tell you it is true that at least some e-mail trojans will: 1. Check the resources of a machine to be reasonably confident it is not a honey pot/profiler 2. Check what is installed to be reasonably sure the owner is not technical If you want to do the same, go to your spam folder and find a VBS trojan and start reverse engineering it. It's surprisingly easy and kind of fun, I estimate that an engineer with 1 year of experience and a solid handle of the command line could probably take apart a simple trojan in 1-8 hours. I tried to use google to find a nice article to read of a breakdown of a trojan, but google seemed determined to return general population level results rather than technical/professional ones.
- daneel_w 4y ago
  >"That's surprisingly modest. 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable." To me it's not modest, because I don't plan to stop using the software after just 3-4 years.
  - decko 4y ago
    I think the point is that after 3 to 4 years, a new version of the perpetual license version would be released and you would spend that amount to upgrade anyway. Of course you could choose no to upgrade, but that’s not always an option when support for new macOS versions are not available in the older version.
    - daneel_w 4y ago
      That business-centric and artificial way of "shedding skin" is sometimes the case. In my experience the move to a new software piece just to get a reason to drop previous licenses - e.g. "BigApp 2" - is thankfully still not the common rule.
- crossroadsguy 4y ago
  It is so interesting to see this line of thinking. I am sure it comes with purchasing power or local spend vs saving culture. I mean I genuinely find it interesting. Because subscriptions pile up. They do. I saw this phenomenon, with horror, devour/take-over note-taking and journal app scenes in almost entirety (except some open source react native/hybrid apps).

keyle 4y ago

Using LuLu for so long I actually forgot that I have it running! +1 for LuLu.

hayst4ck 4y ago

I generally agree with you so I looked it up. In-App Purchases: Yearly Subscription $13.49 Monthly Subscription $1.49 That's surprisingly modest. 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable. The real question is, is little snitch rent seeking? Given what happened after Catalina, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt at the moment. Paying for updates before receiving them definitely creates a conflict of interest. Having looked at their website and seeing SKU-ification (Cutting a product different ways to try to hit different price points) and other business over product decisions, I am definitely feeling shaky about the future of little snitch. SKU-ification is 10x the red flag that a subscription model is. It's worth considering that viruses now days will check and see if programs like this are running and then delete themselves rather than execute the payload.

latexr 4y ago
> 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable. Which is probably why the apps on the App Store which offer both subscription and lifetime pricing tend to have the latter at about 3 times the cost of the former. But Little Snitch Mini does not offer that choice. I’d be willing to pay more than 40$ for a one-time purchase of Little Snitch Mini, but there’s zero chance I’ll do it as a subscription.
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  I see both sides. This dilemma is capitalist hell. Why is obdev sku-ifying their product? Because the incentive model for selling a license means that the market can saturate and there is a lack of recurring or stable income/income safety for the dev. In order to get new spikes of income, a new product is generated. If the market for a particular license becomes saturated, how will they make more money? Licensed based sales incentivizes creation of new product and disincentivizes incremental improvements on already complete products. On the other hand, subscription models incentivize rent seeking. If money is coming in, there is no reason to do more work. Income is not dependent in any way for work done, except maybe compatibility adjustments. So a license is a wonderful model for the buyer and not so great for the seller. A subscription is awful for the buyer, but too good for the seller. So what kind of payment method/pricing scheme, keeps the developer engaged in improving the product, but doesn't incentivize rent-seeking? How would you price things if you were the seller?
  - mhb 4y ago
    Jetbrains' model?
    - hayst4ck 4y ago
      If anyone else was wondering what the model was: https://www.jetbrains.com/store/#personal?billing=monthly https://www.jetbrains.com/store/#personal?billing=monthly https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-perpetual-fallback-license- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... Perpetual fallback license means that if you stop paying for a subscription, you can keep using the version you are on, in perpetuity. Sounds fairly reasonable. If there are no updates, you would cancel your subscription and use the fallback license until the "rent-seeking" stops.
      - Aldo_MX 4y ago
        I'm not sure if the Jetbrains model backfired with the Ukraine war, considering most of the dev team was Russian and they decided to close the Russian offices. I remember that the launch of the 2022 versions had a drop in quality, I don't remember when was the last time I had crashes in a Jetbrains product, but with the launch of 2022 versions crashes occurred on a daily basis to the point I really considered cancelling my subscription, and I activated for the first time the option to block updates in Jetbrains Toolbox. Months later they launched their promotion to keep the current pricing for 3 more years and I renewed. I acknowledge that promotion was a genius move by them, but I'm unsure if that promotion was a result of a drop in income for them.
whynaut 4y ago
From their 'Compare' page, it seems like they are targeting entirely different kinds of users, not price points.
Cort3z 4y ago
> It's worth considering that viruses now days will check and see if programs like this are running and then delete themselves rather than execute the payload. Wait, is this true? Do you have any resources backing this up. This would be a good protection mechanism if you can distill it to the minimum footprint to trigger this self destruct on viruses.
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  For windows it is true. I don't know if there are mainstream osx trojans, but I don't see why they wouldn't have the same behavior. There are services like crowdstrike where you can upload a trojan, it will then run the trojan in a VM to try to see what it does. In response, trojans try to detect if the system they are on is a vm and if it has sufficient power (lots of ram, lots of cpu, age of installation/uptime) rather than minimal power as well as try to detect of the machine is capable of malware analysis or detecting it through installed tools (is python installed, etc.). From first hand experience manually reverse engineering some e-mail trojans for fun, I can tell you it is true that at least some e-mail trojans will: 1. Check the resources of a machine to be reasonably confident it is not a honey pot/profiler 2. Check what is installed to be reasonably sure the owner is not technical If you want to do the same, go to your spam folder and find a VBS trojan and start reverse engineering it. It's surprisingly easy and kind of fun, I estimate that an engineer with 1 year of experience and a solid handle of the command line could probably take apart a simple trojan in 1-8 hours. I tried to use google to find a nice article to read of a breakdown of a trojan, but google seemed determined to return general population level results rather than technical/professional ones.
daneel_w 4y ago
>"That's surprisingly modest. 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable." To me it's not modest, because I don't plan to stop using the software after just 3-4 years.
- decko 4y ago
  I think the point is that after 3 to 4 years, a new version of the perpetual license version would be released and you would spend that amount to upgrade anyway. Of course you could choose no to upgrade, but that’s not always an option when support for new macOS versions are not available in the older version.
  - daneel_w 4y ago
    That business-centric and artificial way of "shedding skin" is sometimes the case. In my experience the move to a new software piece just to get a reason to drop previous licenses - e.g. "BigApp 2" - is thankfully still not the common rule.
crossroadsguy 4y ago
It is so interesting to see this line of thinking. I am sure it comes with purchasing power or local spend vs saving culture. I mean I genuinely find it interesting. Because subscriptions pile up. They do. I saw this phenomenon, with horror, devour/take-over note-taking and journal app scenes in almost entirety (except some open source react native/hybrid apps).