34 ms·

A world where people pay for software

249 points by robalni 3y ago

robalni 3y ago
This is my project, so if you have questions, I can answer them in this thread.
- spuz 3y ago
  The whole website is very confusing. Why would a user want to subscribe to only one developer? Why does subscribing to one developer give access to all developers? Why not put yourself in the middle and offer a subscription to "1Sub.dev" and give users the same benefits? What does it mean to "give access to downloads and other resources"? What kind of downloads and resources? Can you give some examples of services that exist that you think don't work well enough?
  - Kinrany 3y ago
    > Why not put yourself in the middle and offer a subscription to "1Sub.dev" and give users the same benefits? That's simple, decentralized networks are better than platforms and this thing has no need for centralization
  - robalni 3y ago
    > Why would a user want to subscribe to only one developer? Subscribing to one is easier than subscribing to many. There is less friction and the user gets more for that subscription. > Why does subscribing to one developer give access to all developers? All developers (and everyone else) can add subscription checks to whatever they like that will let only subscribers pass. > Why not put yourself in the middle and offer a subscription to "1Sub.dev" and give users the same benefits? Then they would all have to pay me. I don't want that. Someone could have something against paying me. Maybe the payment methods I offer doesn't work for someone. Distributing payments seems like the only right thing to do. > What does it mean to "give access to downloads and other resources"? What kind of downloads and resources? It could be anything. Here is an example of a paywall for this comments page that will only let subscribers follow the link: https://1sub.dev/link?u=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id%3D&s=p_GonuAYEe0&k=&n=hK5ZOXymlHi5s2Es&a=a.18 > Can you give some examples of services that exist that you think don't work well enough? I don't know what kind of services you mean.
    - spuz 3y ago
      I'm very confused about how the distributed payment system would work. How much would a subscription cost for a user and how much would a developer see of that? > I don't know what kind of services you mean. You write on your website: "Why this is better than the alternatives" If you could give examples of the alternatives that you think don't work then it might be helpful to see how your service differs from those.
      - robalni 3y ago
        > I'm very confused about how the distributed payment system would work. How much would a subscription cost for a user and how much would a developer see of that? Developers could sell subscriptions for any price they want. They have a limited number of subscriptions they can sell so there is a supply/demand that influences the price. Users buy directly from the developers so they would get 100% of the money (minus possible transaction fees depending on payment method). > If you could give examples of the alternatives that you think don't work then it might be helpful to see how your service differs from those. The alternatives are mainly the ones listed on the page above: buying things from developers in the usual way and donating. There are also other systems that work in a more centralized way where you pay the system that then distributes the money to the creators and this system differs from all of those in that it doesn't handle any money. If you want an example, there is liberapay.com that seems to be donations with centralized payments. My system tries to be better than that because: - Payments are less voluntary because you get access to stuff when you pay. - Payments are decentralized so there can be more freedom of choice in how you pay.
- Kinrany 3y ago
  Why would developers use this over just asking for money? What are you going to do about people asking for 1 cent to join the network?
  - robalni 3y ago
    > Why would developers use this over just asking for money? More people should want to pay if they use this system because if you just ask for money, you either don't give anything in return (donations) or you give access to your stuff, but with this system, the user gets access to everything that uses this system. > What are you going to do about people asking for 1 cent to join the network? Developers can sell subscriptions for 1 cent but since they have a limited number of subscriptions to sell, they will not make a lot of money that way. If you mean 1 cent to join as a developer, that is free; it's about trust. This should be a cooperation between developers who trust each other.
    - Kinrany 3y ago
      > limited number of subscriptions to sell Oh, I don't remember the website mentioning this. How does this work, and what are the implications?
      - robalni 3y ago
        > Oh, I don't remember the website mentioning this. How does this work, and what are the implications? You can read about it here (bottom): https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works It means that there is a supply/demand that influences what price the subscriptions can be sold for. Developers have a limited number of "credits" that can be turned into subscriptions. They can get more credits by making people subscribe through their links. There is also a plan that the credits will be multiplied and grow with time in order to keep the prices on a sane level.
- bronxpockfabz 3y ago
  > As a developer you sell subscriptions independently; you set the price, handle the money and do all of the interactions with the customer. Then you register the subscription in the system by using a simple API. What prevents me, as a rogue actor, from just adding all my mates to the database without them paying me anything? Would they get access to all other software from the developers who take part in this affair?
  - robalni 3y ago
    > What prevents me, as a rogue actor, from just adding all my mates to the database without them paying me anything? Would they get access to all other software from the developers who take part in this affair? If you are not a trusted developer in the system then the API key prevents you. If you are a trusted developer, then you can give away as many subscriptions for free as you like but you only have a limited number of subscriptions to sell so you will not make as much money that way.
- rokhayakebe 3y ago
  So someone can subscribe to a 0.99/month product and use several 19.99/month products?
  - robalni 3y ago
    > So someone can subscribe to a 0.99/month product and use several 19.99/month products? Yes, a developer can sell the subscriptions for very cheap but then they will probably quickly run out of subscriptions (there is a limited number) and then wish they had sold them for more. Also, the subscription is not really tied to any product; think of it more as a subscription to free software in general, that can be sold by different resellers (the developers).
- nebulous1 3y ago
  I feel like the overall system should be clearer. For instance it's not clear how the developers get credits or whether developer accounts are somehow authenticated as representing a genuine entity. In the opening statement of the site the idea of merely trusting the user without copy protection is completely ignored, but without more details it's not clear if the proposed system is any better.
- rifty 3y ago
  - What do you expect open source developers to charge at minimum for access to the catalog in order to make this make sense to do at all? If people subscribe once and access everything, it seems like they'd need to charge a lot to make it a worthwhile co-op to participate in. It feels like the amount they would have to charge would become pretty financially restrictive to access the code and not in the interests of someone who wanted to open source in the first place... - How does this handle the scenario of a developer disappearing? Does everyone who had access through that developer continue to have access? It seems since payment processing is handled by individual developers, no longer would people have to pay for access to the whole catalog. Does this now mean over the long term you are handling an ever increase supply of people with access who do not pay but can transfer their access to others for free? - How does this handle the scenario of developers with subscribers who are supposed to pay a reoccurring payment but have stopped? Does the developer have the ability to remove access to the catalog from specific subscribers? If the developers have the ability to remove subscribers at will, doesn't this disincentivize paying at all because paying gives you no security in your access you just bought? What is your plan to arbitrate this without access to primary payment information to confirm who is right? - It seems like although decentralized, this approximates to the journal model but for code? Is this your intention?
  - robalni 3y ago
    > - What do you expect open source developers to charge at minimum for access to the catalog in order to make this make sense to do at all? > If people subscribe once and access everything, it seems like they'd need to charge a lot to make it a worthwhile co-op to participate in. I have thought about this a bit and yes, when this thing grows, the subscriptions will be worth more and more. I haven't really done any calculations though because it's really hard to know what things will be like. Anyway, let's try one: Let's say there are 100 developers (individuals) and a developer wants $4000 per month. Then if we want a subscription to be $5 per month or maybe we could allow it to be $10, the number of subscribers per developer would have to be 100 * 4000 / 10 / 100 or just 4000/10 = 400. So I guess as long as the number of subscribers are a few hundreds times more than the number of developers (individuals), it could work. > - How does this handle the scenario of a developer disappearing? Interesting question; I have not thought about that. Developers register and unregister the subscriptions so hopefully they would unregister their subscriptions before they disappear. If they don't do that, it could be forced by the system but there would have to be rules about that then so everybody knows what will happen. > Does the developer have the ability to remove access to the catalog from specific subscribers? Yes, they can register and unregister subscriptions as much as they want. > If the developers have the ability to remove subscribers at will, doesn't this disincentivize paying at all because paying gives you no security in your access you just bought? What is your plan to arbitrate this without access to primary payment information to confirm who is right? That is between the buyer and the seller. If you buy something and you don't get what you bought, you would try to solve that with the seller. Of cource people can complain to 1Sub too and then maybe the other developers will lose trust in that developer and they can be kicked out. > - It seems like although decentralized, this approximates to the journal model but for code? Is this your intention? I have not thought much about the journal model but I can see how this is similar. My main vision has been tax that everyone who wants to be a citizen pays so that they then can enjoy things that are not sold directly to people.
leetrout 3y ago
Sounds similar to Setapp but with a broader audience / goal https://setapp.com/ https://setapp.com/
- leo150 3y ago
  SetApp is amazing, I'm using it on all my devices. It macOS, some apps are also available on iOS.
- chime 3y ago
  Absolutely love Setapp and it was the first thing I thought of when I saw this. The video streaming equivalent of this is Nebula.
transformi 3y ago
Sounds like onlyfans/ gumroad business model for developers... No doubts some developers will benefits from (like 10%), but it will leave the world less open in my opinion.
the_lonely_road 3y ago
I usually consider myself a decently smart individual but damnit this has me questioning that... I read through your landing page and your how-it-works page and I am still...confused. That it ends on a hand wavey "we haven't solved this part yet" statement does not inspire confidence. As best I can tell you are going to take a lot of open software and gatekeep it behind a paywall but each user only has to pay once...to someone...and then they can access all of the software behind that gate. So you are trying to make an ecosystem of software that can only be accessed by people that have paid some money at least once?
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  I considered myself normal functioning, but after reading the landing page I think a few braincells just hanged themselves
kykeonaut 3y ago
I am of the idea that software should be free, but software development should be for profit.
- elemos 3y ago
  How does this work?
  - playingalong 3y ago
    Not OP, but I think they want the software to be FLOSS, but if you want some feature/change you pay (the maintainers) to have it done.
    - kykeonaut 3y ago
      Yep, as well as charging for support and consulting. Anything that has to do with developers'/maintainers' time should not be expected to come for free in FOSS projects. Unless the devs are happy to do such work for free ofc.
- rizky05 3y ago
  Yes, software is just a tool. For me, it's better if I own my tools rather than renting it.
- samsquire 3y ago
  If I spend time on work that provides value to others, I would like it to be able to pay my living costs so I can keep doing that work that I enjoy.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
a254613e 3y ago
Besides being sick of subscriptions for every small thing, I'm not sure I understand the premise here: "Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services." So users won't pay a one-time fee, but instead they will pay a subscription to get that one software they need? They won't "find the software somewhere else" if it's behind a subscription, but will do so if it's behind a single payment?
- robalni 3y ago
  The thing is that this solution scales better. If you had to pay all developers individually, that would not be worth it but with my solution, you have to pay only one. Also, it doesn't have to be a subscription. The payment is 100% up to the developers that you pay, so they could sell a one time payment and register a lifetime subscription in this system for that.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jovial_cavalier 3y ago
  If I understand correctly, you are not getting one piece of software. You get access to everything in their library, like a spotify subscription. You also choose which developer gets your $5 or whatever, so you retain the meritocratic infrastructure that a traditional marketplace provides.
  - NickNaraghi 3y ago
    Now that you mention it, the spotify subscription is actually very interesting here. A bundled subscription for all the software you use could make sense (though it would probably by 10-100x the cost of a spotify subscription). However, OP's resource allocation model (each user determines which developer gets their payment) doesn't make sense to me. I think it would be better to prototype multiple resource allocation models in parallel and see which are most fair and sustainable over time.
grodes 3y ago
Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services. ... The user subscribes to a developer of their choice and in return, all developers (and everyone else who wants to) can give that user some kind of benefit, like giving them access to downloads
- Knee_Pain 3y ago
  >users can find the software somewhere else and what happens when you release a new version? someone will have to be the first to pay, and most people who want to immediately upgrade will also pay the day it's released instead of waiting for some sketchy dude to upload the executable somewhere else
samsquire 3y ago
This is timely, I recently commented about paying for software [0], professional software is very expensive, but it's very expensive to create. There's thankless work such as programming language development, operating systems (Linux), databases and Linux distributions that are profoundly valuable. Even just wrangling them from a devops perspective is painful though. I've never paid for any of the work that went into Ubuntu, Python or Java (I use Corretto) or MySQL or C. I kind of want a community of people that help run a sideproject PaaS and solve the things I would prefer not to work on. Servers that are up-to-date and patched and scalable and robust. I use OmniNotes on my Android phone, I use FreeFileSync, Typora (paid software), IntelliJ Community. What's a price that you would pay pay for your open source software? If it was like Spotify, spotify is like $9.99 a month and apparently 210 million susbcribers according to Bing search "spotify number of subscribers". That's a fair amount of people's living costs to pay for. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36827698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36827698
- ochoseis 3y ago
  > I've never paid for any of the work that went into Ubuntu, Python or Java (I use Corretto) or MySQL or C. You’ve almost certainly paid for them, just not directly. Some share of the cost in the supply chain that delivers you goods and services will inevitably end up with the large enterprises who sponsor or develop those projects.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    by eliminating all actors on the stage and referring solely to "large enterprises", welded unequivocally to ".. who pay for this" the entire ecosystem is reduced to absurd oversimplification. It is both insulting to the others who participate, and bone-headed wrong about where "resources" come from in this unusual, modern ecosystem.
    - ochoseis 3y ago
      The assertion was that even if it doesn’t feel like it, you support open source indirectly. It was not that all funding or contributions are made by large enterprises. I applaud efforts to more directly support projects that give you utility. It’s becoming easier for individuals to do that (as evidenced by the article).
Otek 3y ago
This needs Show HN:
Brian_K_White 3y ago
There does need to be some way for ordinary users to pay something to somewhere in a single convenient way, voluntarily and in voluntary amounts, that somehow ends up being pooled and distributed to or otherwise benefitting all the 37,000 developers and projects whos free work they use all day every day. This isn't it. I donate a little to the EFF, monthly automatic, and a few other things irregularly as I feel particular gratitude. It leaves a million people unaccounted for, but all you can do today is pick a few things that matter to you and let others get the others. And/or pay back/forward by contributing a little work of your own to the commons which I also do, but you can't expect most to do that, and I don't claim mine is valuable. Actually come to think of that, the reason I work on the things I work on is mostly because I just want to, so maybe most of those million are fine and there's no problem. But come to me with any kind of demand, well, I guess that's when paying enters the chat.
- robalni 3y ago
  This is compatible with that. One such service that distributes payments could sell subscriptions in this system. That's one of the ideas I have had all the time with this project but I guess I forgot to write down; payment distributers should be one of those you can subscribe to.
Otek 3y ago
I know people hate Subscriptions but honestly I quite like them. I can pay for one month usually not very high price to use software when I need it. Problem is to be solved by developers, they should give more often option to buy lifetime license, or allow you to use software for lifetime after you payed for 1 year of subscription (without updates). It’s just not profitable enough I believe. Maybe we will have appropriate laws in the future - that’s the solution I would like to see
- api 3y ago
  I don't mind subscriptions if they deliver consistent value and if I can cancel them easily when I want. A lot of hatred of subscriptions comes from hard-to-cancel dark patterns that should be illegal.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Subscriptions just becomes unmanageable when you have to many. I do like your example of some software where you just need it for a month, but I don't think that should be a subscriptions then. That should just be paying for one or two months upfront. The issue that I have with subscriptions is, as I said, they become unmanageable and they are frequently dishonest, betting on you to forget to cancel them. You do a one year subscription for something, forget to cancel in time, and now you're stuck paying for two years. Both SaaS and many other type of subscriptions really need to drop the recurring part and just let you "rent" the product. That seems more honest to me.
  - Otek 3y ago
    I just use single-use card whenever I don’t use AppStore for subscription. That way they won’t charge me again and if I end up using and liking the software I will remember to change card or provide another single use card
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tiltowait 3y ago
  Paying for one month every once in a while for software that would otherwise be very expensive is about the only benefit I can see for subscriptions. For instance, Apple seems to be moving Final Cut Pro to a subscription model, and a $5/mo subscription is pretty great if you just need to use it once or twice or very sporadically. Subscriptions always feel a little scummy to me, due in part to the way they're often advertised. I think that "Only $5/mo!" followed by tiny print saying "Billed annually" should be illegal, because it's clearly deceptive advertising.
gizmo 3y ago
Software has no marginal cost. You can make something that's used by untold millions of people. Even if many people pirate enough people won't for you to recoup your development cost and then some. Software is easier to produce, sell, and distribute than any physical product. You don't have to worry about warehouses filled with unsold inventory. You don't have to worry about quality control and returns. It still blows my mind how much easier it is to run a business that deals with bytes instead of atoms. The OP talks about software having no copy protection, but Amazon sells DVD players and cordless drills for $30. Imagine for a second how hard it is to compete with that. Competing with Google or Microsoft or some startup is a walk in the park in comparison. In software the hard part is making an excellent product. And let's face it, that's where most people fail. It has nothing to do with monetization.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Making an excellent product is hard, but what is really hard, is maintaining it for years and decades afterwards. Maintenance, addition of new functionality, bugfixing, porting to other platforms etc. takes easily 10x-50x time than the initial release, and eats the vast majority of the developers' time and energy. This is where "not being paid for your work" translates into abandoned projects.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    The traditional way to fund maintenance was to release a new and better version of the product. Example, all the releases of the various office suites from the days of MS-DOS up to Windows up to the cloud. If sales decline, sell to a competitor (good timing required) or close and switch to something else. A company that paid salaries for 5-10 years is still nothing to be ashamed of. In the case of Apple, keep selling new hardware. I can't remember if they ever sold their software in the first years of Macs or if it was bundled with the hardware.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      > I can't remember if they ever sold their software in the first years of Macs or if it was bundled with the hardware. In the early OSX era they used to sell their office suite separately. Eventually it got bundled with hardware for free. They still sell some software, like Final Cut Pro.
chadash 3y ago
The link doesn’t talk about the SAAS model, which is probably the most profitable (and ubiquitous) one these days. I know people like to rail against it, but I actually like the SAAS model. It keeps incentives aligned. It used to be that I might shell out $200 for a piece of productivity software. Now, I might pay $10 a month instead. The thing is that under the old model, a company was incentivized by make a sale but retention didn’t matter. Now, a sale is almost worthless, but retention is very valuable. Yes, over time I will pay much more with SAAS, but I also have companies that are incentivized to keep the software working. It doesn’t matter that I have a perpetual license on accounting software I bought in 2005… it no longer functions with my operating system anyway. SAAS helps solve this problem.
- nightski 3y ago
  I feel it's the opposite. The incentive is to lock you in and provide as little value as possible for as much money as possible. Get you hooked, take your data hostage, and then jack up the price as much as possible while delivering little to no additional functionality. Bugs? who cares. Broken functionality? No big deal. You are locked in baby!
  - teeray 3y ago
    It reminds me of the dining hall at my university. The food would always be unbelievably good on parents weekend and any time there were tours that would eat there. Every other time it was mediocre at best. The check for the meal plan money cleared and the goal was to give back the bare minimum.
  - lawn 3y ago
    What exactly is the difference from paying up front? There there's even less incentives to fix bugs, fix broken functionality and god forbid new functionality.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - 3y ago
abmackenzie 3y ago
I'm a bit confused - you subscribe to one developer, and then get the benefit of being subscribed to all? What's the incentive for a developer to sign up to this then, if they don't get a share of your subscription when you use their service? Isn't this a bit like asking Disney+ to give all Netflix subscribers access with no compensation?
- robalni 3y ago
  The difference this is supposed to make is that currently most people don't pay for free software. I don't for example. That is because I don't need to. This system is supposed to make more people pay, which should mean that all developers get more money. Giving access to someone who subscribes to someone else is part of what makes this work and if the developers can accept that, they should all benefit from it.
  - abmackenzie 3y ago
    But I don't get any $ from it unless they sign up on MY site, right? Since there's no sharing mechanism. So I don't see how joining in would benefit me - if anything I'd lose a bit of revenue from people who would have paid and now find they don't need to because they're signed up for some other product which I have no hand in and no revenue from?
    - robalni 3y ago
      > But I don't get any $ from it unless they sign up on MY site, right? Since there's no sharing mechanism. Exactly. > So I don't see how joining in would benefit me - if anything I'd lose a bit of revenue from people who would have paid and now find they don't need to because they're signed up for some other product which I have no hand in and no revenue from? It would not benefit you if the average person paid for multiple free software projects. In that case, they would only have to pay for one instead of multiple. I don't think that's the case though, so this solution should make more people pay for free software and that should benefit the developers on average.
andy99 3y ago
How do you prevent or discourage the rise of "influencer developers"? The problem with subscriptions as a solution is that they end up being a popularity contest. That's not necessarily bad, if people want to spend their money that way but it doesn't solve the global problem of paying for those who write software. If it takes off it will just mean more Lex Fridman types get a big subscriber base, and a bunch more try and emulate that model. If fact I think it could easily distract a lot of people from focusing on writing software.
- robalni 3y ago
  I know that is a possible problem. Partially, that problem exists with everything; advertisements make people buy from the most popular brands even if they are not the best. Other than that, the developers in this cooperation have to trust each other so if someone is just popular and doesn't make any good software, they would not be accepted by the other developers to join.
  - CBarkleyU 3y ago
    >doesn't make any good software What if the person does make decent software, but is a huge influencer? Why not opt for the Spotify model? Usage = money. Why turn this into a popularity contest?
    - robalni 3y ago
      > What if the person does make decent software, but is a huge influencer? Then they would probably be able to make more money selling subscriptions than other developers that are less known. I don't know how different that would be though from if they sold physical products. One important thing here is that there is a limit to how many subscriptions one developer can sell. This is done to emulate physical products as much as possible. Also, they would probably sell the subscriptions for a higher price than other developers, since they can, which would mean that people who don't know about that person would buy from someone who is cheaper. > Why not opt for the Spotify model? Usage = money. Why turn this into a popularity contest? That means there has to be usage statistics collection in all software. Since the software has to be open source, that could be abused a lot, including removed. I also don't like the idea of having any requirement like that on the software. It would for example require that the software has access to the internet which doesn't work well for some software.
Knee_Pain 3y ago
I think the biggest problem is the financial infrastructure. We pay for software almost exclusively through digital means, but the fees are too damn high. Imagine if transaction fees were zero. Imagine if a piece of software you used costed 10 cents per months. Or someone's patreon or github sponsor was 5 cents per month. And then imagine if starting and stopping the subscription was intuitive and super easy with any digital payment method you happened to use. I could see the flood gates open and now developers who got basically nothing will get a ton of small contributions that together would make up quite a nice lump sum every month
- pixl97 3y ago
  At the same time cost gates are quality gates quite often.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  From experience I know this truth: Somebody who won't pay $5 per month will never pay $1 per month nor will they ever pay 10 cents per month. Something in the mind switches and people turn full on psychotic when it comes to paying for digital services, and there's not much that you can do to fight it with logic. Just look at Github projects for some really good stuff that are used by thousands or millions. At most the developers will have received 10-20 donations. Almost all of the commenters here on HN have never donated a single dollar to the projects that they love and enjoy.
- ativzzz 3y ago
  A former company I worked for started having a larger Indian userbase. We experimented with supporting them more and it would be similar to what you said - significantly lower prices for them. We chose to mostly ignore the Indian userbase and let them use the product as is without catering to them The reality is that just because someone pays less doesn't mean they cost less to support. And then, if you support a large number of cheap users, it's even more expensive to support. As a business, you'd rather have 10 customers paying $10 dollars each instead of 100 customers paying $1 each. Larger businesses can overcome this with economies of scale, but smaller businesses cannot
thorin 3y ago
Strangely this is the same thing that happened to the music business. Maybe we need to start selling merch and going out on tour to make a living!
- CharlesW 3y ago
  https://linuxfoundation.store/ https://linuxfoundation.store/
rco8786 3y ago
I am super confused about the concept. I pay "someone", of my own choosing, and I get access to...what, exactly? "everything"? What is that? What incentive do the developers that I'm not paying have to give me something? > Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services. I also reject this premise. My evidence being the trillions of dollars spent annually on software and other services.
- robalni 3y ago
  What you get access to is everything that is protected using this site. Anyone can create paywalls. Here is an example of a link that only lets subscribers view this comments page: https://1sub.dev/link?u=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id%3D&s=p_GonuAYEe0&k=&n=hK5ZOXymlHi5s2Es&a=a.18
preommr 3y ago
I don't get it. I also see other comments not getting it so I don't think it's just me. Is this like Kindle unlimited where someone pays a single subscription and gets access to all content providers on the platform (in this case content is software), where creators get a proportion of the subscription fee based on how much a user used an app? So e.g. 10$ per month, I use FooReader 90% of the time, so they get 9$. Idk, even if I am not getting the details, I don't think that any collective approach to app is going to work. Unlike with other industries like movies or music, products in software are very different from each other and is consumed in a variety of ways (library vs end-user app) that have a lot of complicated nuance (in terms of licensing and company goals).
- robalni 3y ago
  > where someone pays a single subscription and gets access to all content providers on the platform (in this case content is software), where creators get a proportion of the subscription fee It is like that, except that users buy the subscriptions directly from the developers. 1Sub doesn't handle any money. This also means that the developers get 100% of the money (except for any transaction fees depending on payment method).
meatjuice 3y ago
Won't this just accelerate the reinventions of wheels that's happening everywhere on the Internet?
grishka 3y ago
Speaking of software business models, I like the idea of charging money for convenience. As in, make the app open-source, but sell compiled binaries and maybe tech support.
- tiffanyh 3y ago
  That’s the AWS model. Take a free open source product, and charge for hosting & maintaining it.
  - grishka 3y ago
    Yeah, if it's a server app, you can also sell it as a hosted service.
ericls 3y ago
By "people" are you excluding organizations such as governments, corporations etc?
- robalni 3y ago
  > By "people" are you excluding organizations such as governments, corporations etc? If you mean "people" as in "A world where people pay for software", then no. I think companies, especially software companies, would like to subscribe in this system if it gets big because if they have dependencies that require subscriptions, they probably don't want anything to get in the way for their employees.
ozim 3y ago
I have a different take on the topic. People should not pay for software - average Joe should have all kinds of software basically free. Now you ask "who should pay for development", corporations, companies or foundations where people still could donate but would not have to. Where corporations and companies pay salaries and provide end users with services. Solo devs should not write and maintain anything without getting paid. Yes it is "corporate dystopia" but on the other hand when I see all kinds of rants or horror stories from OSS maintainers and companies that don't want to contribute it seems only reasonable way. Corporation/Company/Foundation pay salaries for devs and provide people with software while charging for services like keeping data or any other actual services that can be connected to software they provide or in case of foundations by donations.
- ativzzz 3y ago
  This is like the musician problem. There are so many people willing to play for pretty much nothing or for free that it's very hard for the average musician to make money. On the consumer side, why should you always pay for music when so many people are doing it for free? There's an oversupply of eager musicians making music Same with OSS development. Why should you pay for something if people just do it for free? Doesn't matter who the consumer is. > Solo devs should not write and maintain anything without getting paid. But they do, and they will regardless. And until they stop, nothing will change. There's an oversupply of eager coders coding for free Companies will pay (their own developers) once the OSS solution doesn't work or needs extra extensions that doesn't exist.
  - vbezhenar 3y ago
    > But they do, and they will regardless. And until they stop, nothing will change. There's an oversupply of eager coders coding for free There's no thriving market of OSS apps for iOS. So the solution is simple. Charge some money from developer to allow distribution of his apps. This seem to kill open source attitude very well.
    - em-bee 3y ago
intrasight 3y ago
I like Yale University and Oracle Corporation's model: "How much do you make? Give us 10%"
tomrod 3y ago
Can I just say, I absolutely love the functionality of this side and its linked sites? I really appreciate fast, simple sites.
rchaud 3y ago
Two models that weren't discussed: Sketch App - $99 once, $99/yr if you want upgrades (I did not) Wordpress model - Core is FOSS, money is made with custom plug-ins that can be priced freely.
islammidov 3y ago
I believe software eating the world (and will continue to do so) exactly because of how it's paid now. Not sure that much innovation needed here
picadores 3y ago
I wonder, if the "tax-funded" model could work for software. The state raises money from the public, but the public determinates directly via usage (minutes spend with), usefullness (money gained) how much of that tax goes to what developer. Cut out the monopoly buisness middle man, but also remove any political moral meddlers in various "round tables" as they are omni present in public media systems. The idea has problems though. How to pay for background ("invisble" layers). How to prevetn "hyper transparent citizens". Etc.
- xtreme 3y ago
  Minutes spent is a horrible metric. It creates a perverse incentive to intentionally slow down the software.
rzwitserloot 3y ago
This product names crucial issues with how software development is currently monetized, and then offers an alternative that... solves absolutely none of these problems. Optional extras like 'downloads or other resources' are presumably digital and therefore do not solve the problem - folks can still pirate it. If that's not the point, then it is a donation, in the simplified parlance of the first paragraph of 1sub.dev. And this all from a company/effort that has such lofty goals that the html title of the page is 'a world where people pay for software'. This (how do you monetize software development / how do we e.g. let FOSS developers capture more than the current 0.0000000001% of the value they create) is an incredibly difficult problem and this effort sounds like some naive newbie took 5 seconds to think about it and thought: Yeah let's fix things! At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old fart: Hoo boy if it was that simple, it'd have been solved already. Alternative plans that work a lot better: * The NPM ecosystem has a ton of software-as-a-service offerings, e.g. where you can use their site to serve as online tool to e.g. make documentation, to have their site host that documentation, etc. I hate this model (you get nickel-and-dimed and both companies and open source developers alike don't usually like having 50 downstream service providers who, if they go down or have issues, require you having to explain to _your_ customers what's going wrong), but it solves the problems this site names (you can't pirate this, and you get something of value for your money in return). * Tidelift tries to provide security assurances and support: The payers don't just 'donate', they pay to just be done with the security issues with FOSS dependencies: Tidelift gives you software that scans all your dev work for all your deps and which versions you are on, and tidelift ensures not just that there are no major security holes in those deps, but also that the authors of those deps have made some basic promises about maintaining it in trade for real consideration (namely: money). Github sponsors and the like are more or less barking up the same tree. These setups also solve an unstated problem 1sub.dev tries to solve, which is: You tend to use _a lot_ of software; if you have, say, 600 dependencies (not crazy in this modern age of software dev), and you want to individually set up a 'deal' with all of em, one person has a full time job as they will have to renew over 2 contracts __every working day__ assuming all your subscriptions are yearly. * Microsoft and co do it as a package deal: You pay one fee for everything they offer and aggressively legally chase down anybody that pirates. * patreon and co grease the wheels of the donation flow by making it simpler and allowing developers to give something that's hard to pirate: T-shirts and stickers, mentions in the 'about...' page and so on. * Some developers of FOSS, as well as _many_ commercial outfits, will accept money in trade for priority support. All of these models have issues. But at least they actually aim to solve the problems. This attempt doesn't even begin to tackle the actual issues, unless I'm missing something. As a 1million+ user FOSS developer who maintains the library primarily based on privilege (I have enough income to work for the roughly minimum wage I currently get for it, though I could have earned vastly more if I worked for a commercial entity for those hours) - I'm aware that this is not a good situation, that you need to sort out your finances separately just to be a good FOSS author. But, I don't see how 1sub.dev is going to add much compared to what's already there (patreon, github sponsors, FOSS aggregators like apache and eclipse foundation, tidelift, etc).
Pxtl 3y ago
This sounds like Patreon. Imho, the "just buy it" or "patreon to access the development discord/forum/whatever for OSS" seem like the best approaches. Like, I'm in Mastodon's patreon, and I'm happy to buy software. And while it may sting, I'm okay with "major release = new version buy it again". Not fond fond of installed local non-cloud software in the SAAS business model.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > This sounds like Patreon. It's exactly Patreon or one of its many competitors. The "subscribe to a creator and get special perks" problem is common and solved, but as you note the "CaaS" (creator as a service) model isn't for everyone.
TheMode 3y ago
Why do we insist on making software paid? Wouldn't it make more sense to work toward making software more stable so I could decide to make a calculator app during my free time, and have it somehow still used 200y later? Software is stupidly simple to distribute, but for some reason one of the hardest to keep. Obviously if we cannot use any software of the past, we are stuck with developers having to maintain old or new solutions.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >Software is stupidly simple to distribute Society is spending billions of dollars each year for working on complex hardware and software to make that distribution possible. Physical goods are the stupidly simply thing to distribute.
  - TheMode 3y ago
    There is intrinsic complexity involved in distributing physical goods. Software complexity is mostly made up. Would billions solve software distribution & longevity? How?
frithsun 3y ago
> imagines a sally struthers charity commercial, but with random hipsters and nerds staring sadly at the camera, hoping that somebody, somewhere, will pay them as much money as they think they deserve
deleted 3y ago
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blueyes 3y ago
People pay for scarcity, not utility. In economics, this is expressed as the water-diamond paradox. Software makers simply need to find ways to make some piece of what they sell scarce (managed workloads). Everything else depends on the conspicuous consumption of idealists; ie it doesn't scale.
andruby 3y ago
I don't understand the "economic" model. If I'm a developer and get to chose what to charge, that means I can ask people for $0.01, and they would get access to everything from all developers of this "platform"? The example on [0] where a developer pays credits when they get a subscriber is confusing. Should Devs "top up" somehow? [0] https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works
- robalni 3y ago
  > If I'm a developer and get to chose what to charge, that means I can ask people for $0.01, and they would get access to everything from all developers of this "platform"? You can do that but you will not make a lot of money that way. The number of subscriptions you can sell is limited so if you sell all of them for $0.01 you will probably wish you had asked for more and when you have sold out, only the more expensive subscriptions sold by other developers remain and they will make more money than you. > The example on [0] where a developer pays credits when they get a subscriber is confusing. Should Devs "top up" somehow? I don't know exactly what you mean by "top up" but the credits are turned into subscriptions when sold. This is how we make sure the developers can't sell infinite subscriptions. The plan is then that with time, the developers will get more credits so that they can sell more subscriptions. How fast they will get more could depend on the current value of their account, where the value could be calculated from the credits and the number of subscribers they have.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > How fast they will get more could depend on the current value of their account, where the value could be calculated from the credits and the number of subscribers they have. So are you then implicitly setting the price yourself because anyone who doesn't charge enough can't get more credits? Suppose someone develops an app which takes hardly any effort to make -- it's a hundred lines of code -- but it does something common that everybody needs so if available for $0.01 it would have a hundred million users. Which would gross a million dollars and more than pay for the development of the simple app, so the developer is satisfied with that. But to do that you'd have to let them sell a hundred million subscriptions for $0.01 each. Now let's go toward the other end of the spectrum. Some app which is specialized and requires a million dollars of developer time but only has a market of 10,000 customers. Those customers would pay $100 each for it, if they had to, but not if they can buy into the system somewhere else for $10 (or $0.01) instead. In general, who is going to buy a fungible subscription for significantly more than it's available somewhere else? How do you handle the fact that the development cost of a thing isn't proportional to the number of people who use it?
dboreham 3y ago
In the spirit of throwing random ideas at the wall to see what sticks, this is fine. But it's obviously not going to work.
haunter 3y ago
So video games right now in 2023?
jansommer 3y ago
> Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services. If users can find the software elsewhere, then it must be cheaper or better if they don't want to use yours. If this is about pirating, then it's just a matter of time before they buy, unless the ransom for decrypting their personal files bankrupts them. Please, no more subscriptions.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
simonbarker87 3y ago
So it’s like SetApp?
deafpolygon 3y ago
Pirating and 'illegal' copies of software is not what's impacting your bottom line.
majestic5762 3y ago
Actually I'm seeing a big new wave of open source projects that you can host yourself, but can be used as SaaS if you are willing to pay. I'm always paying because I don't want to bother and because the devs have my /respect
coxley 3y ago
> # Developers > Sorry, there are no developers to subscribe to currently. If you actually want adoption, more needs done than posting the thing you built and suggesting people use it. Building effective, self-sufficient marketplaces is tough. Benefit has to be seen on both sides from the get-go.
- slim 3y ago
  I'm baffled by the fact the developer did not put himself on that list
indymike 3y ago
Un-ironically, I make a living from people who pay for my software. I have for 30 years, as both a developer for hire, as an independent developer and even from royalties. It's not hard. Make something useful, make it well, place it where buyers can find it, and price it in a way that makes sense.
kapitanjakc 3y ago
There's tons of free software out and there's tons of paid software too. Problem is with quality and adaptation.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software and we can enable the maximum value creation possible. Other engineers like those that design commodities like dishwashers and cars or important manufacturing or medical equipment can also open source their designs so that repair costs are low and innovative improvements are easy to apply. I genuinely believe this would result in a steeper and more rapid innovation curve as well as a better world for all, than a world where we try to monetize things which have zero marginal cost to reproduce.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  From each according to his ability. So far we haven't worked out how to square that with human nature, and it keeps failing utterly.
  - SequoiaHope 3y ago
    And yet 100 years ago Peter Kropotkin asked, "Are we good enough?" (to handle capitalism?) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-we-good-enough https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-w... A single paragraph excerpt: "Men are not good enough for Communism, but are they good enough for Capitalism? If all men were good-hearted, kind, and just, they would never exploit one another, although possessing the means of doing so. With such men the private ownership of capital would be no danger. The capitalist would hasten to share his profits with the workers, and the best-remunerated workers with those suffering from occasional causes. If men were provident they would not produce velvet and articles of luxury while food is wanted in cottages: they would not build palaces as long as there are slums. "
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      Capitalism at least tries to use human selfishness to achieve a better outcome, even if imperfect. Could it be better? Obviously. I’m not convinced communism is the answer.
Joel_Mckay 3y ago
People often no longer own commercial licenses, but rather rent their assets until the updated terms of their agreements become a liability. Android -> Sales funnel for app store/services, and consumer profiling MacOS -> Sales funnel for app store/services, and consumer profiling Windows 11 -> Sales funnel for app store/services, and consumer profiling Ubuntu -> Sales funnel for app store/services, and consumer profiling Most people conflate information appliances with general purpose computing. It is a shame 98% of the market went this route... You still pay, but are just unaware how you are being monetized. =)
neerajdotname2 3y ago
Inspite of all the competition the SAAS pricing is not coming down. There are around 30 calendly alterntatives. However if you check the price of these alternatives they are not too far from what the market leader is charging. More on this at https://blog.neeto.com/p/neetocal-a-calendly-alternative-is https://blog.neeto.com/p/neetocal-a-calendly-alternative-is.
charlieyu1 3y ago
Sounds like Patreon with extra steps. May or may not be a good idea.
ajkjk 3y ago
My question is: why isn't there yet a thing (or is there?) that works like AWS, but has the UX experience of a smartphone: you can install "apps" on it -- which you pay for hosting / bandwidth -- and it handles integration with all your devices, while leaving you in charge of how they're configured and what happens with the data? Sorta like expanding the mobile phone experience to encompass your whole internet experience, so you can choose what services you use, and where they're hosted, and those two things are fundamentally decoupled. One such app could be a sort of 'charge card' for websites, which would pay them pennies, or larger tips if you like, instead of having to see ads. Another might be a connection to a search engine which allows you to tailor _your_ search experience instead of it being optimized in e.g. Google's interests with all the commercial stuff at the top.
- arrosenberg 3y ago
  > My question is: why isn't there yet a thing (or is there?) that works like AWS, but has the UX experience of a smartphone: you can install "apps" on it -- which you pay for hosting / bandwidth -- and it handles integration with all your devices, while leaving you in charge of how they're configured and what happens with the data? Heroku?
  - ajkjk 3y ago
    Not at all. I can't "install a cloud storage app on my Heroku and then access it on my phone" without significant technical skills. As an engineer I could figure it out, but I won't, because I don't want to deal with that. Instead I will fantasize about how it ought to work.
    - arrosenberg 3y ago
      Maybe https://sandstorm.io/ https://sandstorm.io/ then?
- nyanpasu64 3y ago
  I want a plug-and-play way to install services like (front-ends) BreezeWiki, Rimgo, Nitter, and Invidious, and (self-hosted) Miniflux, Gitea, a centralized Syncthing node, and an image sync tool (possibly Immich), onto an old laptop I own, without messing with users, groups, AUR builds, upgrading between Postgres versions... like a world where sandstorm.io had taken off. Then access them on any of my devices, like Tailscale but without binding arbitration and a class action waiver...
michaelmrose 3y ago
How does one divide up the money and how much is overhead this seems like the central question.
dbrueck 3y ago
A root of the problem is using economic models for physical items with digital goods and services. IMO the most sensical low level* economic model for digital things would be one where you pay a really tiny amount every time you derive value from something. A fraction of a penny each time you play a song, each time you edit an image in some software, each time you visit a website. There are a boatload of obstacles to getting to a model like this, but as a thought exercise it's really interesting to consider an alternate universe where this model got established instead of, say, everything being ad-based. Not only would it provide a model for monetizing software, it would also for example completely reframe DRM (making it both far more ubiquitous but also far less antagonizing to the user, since it would be aligned with what the user is trying to do instead of being at odds with it). * The idea being that this low level economic would exist but for practical reasons (like overcoming human psychology) you might need to overlay a higher level model like a monthly "unlimited consumption" subscription or tax.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Interesting to think about. However, for that to be feasible I believe the draconian "copyright forever" laws would have to have never happened. I'm against paying rent to corporations to access the work of dead people on principle. Or past say, fifty years even if they lived.
  - dbrueck 3y ago
    I think I'm in the same boat as you, but can you articulate the 'why' behind that sentiment? (saying it's "on principle" could also be a way to not have to address that question, haha) As in, if someone created something and you derive value (utility, enjoyment, etc.) from it, what is the basis for at some point no longer providing compensation for that utility? FWIW, I haven't come up with a completely convincing answer, and yet I still feel like you do! Maybe there is no firm justification for terminating compensation, but instead it's more of an idea instilled by the culture, that after X years, the thing you created becomes owned by society at large just for the greater good, or maybe in recognition that your work came about because of prior accomplishments from others, or that as a society we want ongoing creativity and not stagnation.
faangiq 3y ago
The problem with code monkeys is they have low social IQs. So business guys will just keep exploiting them.
BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
is a world where people pay to use specific words the idea of "property" (ownership) which is the cornerstone of the whole of civilization breaks down when applied to digital goods.
pabs3 3y ago
The Find developer page doesn't list any developers, has anyone signed up for this yet or do you need a login to view the list? https://1sub.dev/list https://1sub.dev/list

249 points by robalni 3y ago

robalni 3y ago

This is my project, so if you have questions, I can answer them in this thread.

spuz 3y ago
The whole website is very confusing. Why would a user want to subscribe to only one developer? Why does subscribing to one developer give access to all developers? Why not put yourself in the middle and offer a subscription to "1Sub.dev" and give users the same benefits? What does it mean to "give access to downloads and other resources"? What kind of downloads and resources? Can you give some examples of services that exist that you think don't work well enough?
- Kinrany 3y ago
  > Why not put yourself in the middle and offer a subscription to "1Sub.dev" and give users the same benefits? That's simple, decentralized networks are better than platforms and this thing has no need for centralization
- robalni 3y ago
  > Why would a user want to subscribe to only one developer? Subscribing to one is easier than subscribing to many. There is less friction and the user gets more for that subscription. > Why does subscribing to one developer give access to all developers? All developers (and everyone else) can add subscription checks to whatever they like that will let only subscribers pass. > Why not put yourself in the middle and offer a subscription to "1Sub.dev" and give users the same benefits? Then they would all have to pay me. I don't want that. Someone could have something against paying me. Maybe the payment methods I offer doesn't work for someone. Distributing payments seems like the only right thing to do. > What does it mean to "give access to downloads and other resources"? What kind of downloads and resources? It could be anything. Here is an example of a paywall for this comments page that will only let subscribers follow the link: https://1sub.dev/link?u=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id%3D&s=p_GonuAYEe0&k=&n=hK5ZOXymlHi5s2Es&a=a.18 > Can you give some examples of services that exist that you think don't work well enough? I don't know what kind of services you mean.
  - spuz 3y ago
    I'm very confused about how the distributed payment system would work. How much would a subscription cost for a user and how much would a developer see of that? > I don't know what kind of services you mean. You write on your website: "Why this is better than the alternatives" If you could give examples of the alternatives that you think don't work then it might be helpful to see how your service differs from those.
    - robalni 3y ago
      > I'm very confused about how the distributed payment system would work. How much would a subscription cost for a user and how much would a developer see of that? Developers could sell subscriptions for any price they want. They have a limited number of subscriptions they can sell so there is a supply/demand that influences the price. Users buy directly from the developers so they would get 100% of the money (minus possible transaction fees depending on payment method). > If you could give examples of the alternatives that you think don't work then it might be helpful to see how your service differs from those. The alternatives are mainly the ones listed on the page above: buying things from developers in the usual way and donating. There are also other systems that work in a more centralized way where you pay the system that then distributes the money to the creators and this system differs from all of those in that it doesn't handle any money. If you want an example, there is liberapay.com that seems to be donations with centralized payments. My system tries to be better than that because: - Payments are less voluntary because you get access to stuff when you pay. - Payments are decentralized so there can be more freedom of choice in how you pay.
Kinrany 3y ago
Why would developers use this over just asking for money? What are you going to do about people asking for 1 cent to join the network?
- robalni 3y ago
  > Why would developers use this over just asking for money? More people should want to pay if they use this system because if you just ask for money, you either don't give anything in return (donations) or you give access to your stuff, but with this system, the user gets access to everything that uses this system. > What are you going to do about people asking for 1 cent to join the network? Developers can sell subscriptions for 1 cent but since they have a limited number of subscriptions to sell, they will not make a lot of money that way. If you mean 1 cent to join as a developer, that is free; it's about trust. This should be a cooperation between developers who trust each other.
  - Kinrany 3y ago
    > limited number of subscriptions to sell Oh, I don't remember the website mentioning this. How does this work, and what are the implications?
    - robalni 3y ago
      > Oh, I don't remember the website mentioning this. How does this work, and what are the implications? You can read about it here (bottom): https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works It means that there is a supply/demand that influences what price the subscriptions can be sold for. Developers have a limited number of "credits" that can be turned into subscriptions. They can get more credits by making people subscribe through their links. There is also a plan that the credits will be multiplied and grow with time in order to keep the prices on a sane level.
bronxpockfabz 3y ago
> As a developer you sell subscriptions independently; you set the price, handle the money and do all of the interactions with the customer. Then you register the subscription in the system by using a simple API. What prevents me, as a rogue actor, from just adding all my mates to the database without them paying me anything? Would they get access to all other software from the developers who take part in this affair?
- robalni 3y ago
  > What prevents me, as a rogue actor, from just adding all my mates to the database without them paying me anything? Would they get access to all other software from the developers who take part in this affair? If you are not a trusted developer in the system then the API key prevents you. If you are a trusted developer, then you can give away as many subscriptions for free as you like but you only have a limited number of subscriptions to sell so you will not make as much money that way.
rokhayakebe 3y ago
So someone can subscribe to a 0.99/month product and use several 19.99/month products?
- robalni 3y ago
  > So someone can subscribe to a 0.99/month product and use several 19.99/month products? Yes, a developer can sell the subscriptions for very cheap but then they will probably quickly run out of subscriptions (there is a limited number) and then wish they had sold them for more. Also, the subscription is not really tied to any product; think of it more as a subscription to free software in general, that can be sold by different resellers (the developers).
nebulous1 3y ago
I feel like the overall system should be clearer. For instance it's not clear how the developers get credits or whether developer accounts are somehow authenticated as representing a genuine entity. In the opening statement of the site the idea of merely trusting the user without copy protection is completely ignored, but without more details it's not clear if the proposed system is any better.
rifty 3y ago
- What do you expect open source developers to charge at minimum for access to the catalog in order to make this make sense to do at all? If people subscribe once and access everything, it seems like they'd need to charge a lot to make it a worthwhile co-op to participate in. It feels like the amount they would have to charge would become pretty financially restrictive to access the code and not in the interests of someone who wanted to open source in the first place... - How does this handle the scenario of a developer disappearing? Does everyone who had access through that developer continue to have access? It seems since payment processing is handled by individual developers, no longer would people have to pay for access to the whole catalog. Does this now mean over the long term you are handling an ever increase supply of people with access who do not pay but can transfer their access to others for free? - How does this handle the scenario of developers with subscribers who are supposed to pay a reoccurring payment but have stopped? Does the developer have the ability to remove access to the catalog from specific subscribers? If the developers have the ability to remove subscribers at will, doesn't this disincentivize paying at all because paying gives you no security in your access you just bought? What is your plan to arbitrate this without access to primary payment information to confirm who is right? - It seems like although decentralized, this approximates to the journal model but for code? Is this your intention?
- robalni 3y ago
  > - What do you expect open source developers to charge at minimum for access to the catalog in order to make this make sense to do at all? > If people subscribe once and access everything, it seems like they'd need to charge a lot to make it a worthwhile co-op to participate in. I have thought about this a bit and yes, when this thing grows, the subscriptions will be worth more and more. I haven't really done any calculations though because it's really hard to know what things will be like. Anyway, let's try one: Let's say there are 100 developers (individuals) and a developer wants $4000 per month. Then if we want a subscription to be $5 per month or maybe we could allow it to be $10, the number of subscribers per developer would have to be 100 * 4000 / 10 / 100 or just 4000/10 = 400. So I guess as long as the number of subscribers are a few hundreds times more than the number of developers (individuals), it could work. > - How does this handle the scenario of a developer disappearing? Interesting question; I have not thought about that. Developers register and unregister the subscriptions so hopefully they would unregister their subscriptions before they disappear. If they don't do that, it could be forced by the system but there would have to be rules about that then so everybody knows what will happen. > Does the developer have the ability to remove access to the catalog from specific subscribers? Yes, they can register and unregister subscriptions as much as they want. > If the developers have the ability to remove subscribers at will, doesn't this disincentivize paying at all because paying gives you no security in your access you just bought? What is your plan to arbitrate this without access to primary payment information to confirm who is right? That is between the buyer and the seller. If you buy something and you don't get what you bought, you would try to solve that with the seller. Of cource people can complain to 1Sub too and then maybe the other developers will lose trust in that developer and they can be kicked out. > - It seems like although decentralized, this approximates to the journal model but for code? Is this your intention? I have not thought much about the journal model but I can see how this is similar. My main vision has been tax that everyone who wants to be a citizen pays so that they then can enjoy things that are not sold directly to people.

leetrout 3y ago

Sounds similar to Setapp but with a broader audience / goal https://setapp.com/ https://setapp.com/

leo150 3y ago
SetApp is amazing, I'm using it on all my devices. It macOS, some apps are also available on iOS.
chime 3y ago
Absolutely love Setapp and it was the first thing I thought of when I saw this. The video streaming equivalent of this is Nebula.

transformi 3y ago

Sounds like onlyfans/ gumroad business model for developers... No doubts some developers will benefits from (like 10%), but it will leave the world less open in my opinion.

the_lonely_road 3y ago

I usually consider myself a decently smart individual but damnit this has me questioning that... I read through your landing page and your how-it-works page and I am still...confused. That it ends on a hand wavey "we haven't solved this part yet" statement does not inspire confidence. As best I can tell you are going to take a lot of open software and gatekeep it behind a paywall but each user only has to pay once...to someone...and then they can access all of the software behind that gate. So you are trying to make an ecosystem of software that can only be accessed by people that have paid some money at least once?

lnxg33k1 3y ago
I considered myself normal functioning, but after reading the landing page I think a few braincells just hanged themselves

kykeonaut 3y ago

I am of the idea that software should be free, but software development should be for profit.

elemos 3y ago
How does this work?
- playingalong 3y ago
  Not OP, but I think they want the software to be FLOSS, but if you want some feature/change you pay (the maintainers) to have it done.
  - kykeonaut 3y ago
    Yep, as well as charging for support and consulting. Anything that has to do with developers'/maintainers' time should not be expected to come for free in FOSS projects. Unless the devs are happy to do such work for free ofc.
rizky05 3y ago
Yes, software is just a tool. For me, it's better if I own my tools rather than renting it.
samsquire 3y ago
If I spend time on work that provides value to others, I would like it to be able to pay my living costs so I can keep doing that work that I enjoy.
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a254613e 3y ago

Besides being sick of subscriptions for every small thing, I'm not sure I understand the premise here: "Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services." So users won't pay a one-time fee, but instead they will pay a subscription to get that one software they need? They won't "find the software somewhere else" if it's behind a subscription, but will do so if it's behind a single payment?

robalni 3y ago
The thing is that this solution scales better. If you had to pay all developers individually, that would not be worth it but with my solution, you have to pay only one. Also, it doesn't have to be a subscription. The payment is 100% up to the developers that you pay, so they could sell a one time payment and register a lifetime subscription in this system for that.
- deleted 3y ago
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jovial_cavalier 3y ago
If I understand correctly, you are not getting one piece of software. You get access to everything in their library, like a spotify subscription. You also choose which developer gets your $5 or whatever, so you retain the meritocratic infrastructure that a traditional marketplace provides.
- NickNaraghi 3y ago
  Now that you mention it, the spotify subscription is actually very interesting here. A bundled subscription for all the software you use could make sense (though it would probably by 10-100x the cost of a spotify subscription). However, OP's resource allocation model (each user determines which developer gets their payment) doesn't make sense to me. I think it would be better to prototype multiple resource allocation models in parallel and see which are most fair and sustainable over time.

grodes 3y ago

Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services. ... The user subscribes to a developer of their choice and in return, all developers (and everyone else who wants to) can give that user some kind of benefit, like giving them access to downloads

Knee_Pain 3y ago
>users can find the software somewhere else and what happens when you release a new version? someone will have to be the first to pay, and most people who want to immediately upgrade will also pay the day it's released instead of waiting for some sketchy dude to upload the executable somewhere else

samsquire 3y ago

This is timely, I recently commented about paying for software [0], professional software is very expensive, but it's very expensive to create. There's thankless work such as programming language development, operating systems (Linux), databases and Linux distributions that are profoundly valuable. Even just wrangling them from a devops perspective is painful though. I've never paid for any of the work that went into Ubuntu, Python or Java (I use Corretto) or MySQL or C. I kind of want a community of people that help run a sideproject PaaS and solve the things I would prefer not to work on. Servers that are up-to-date and patched and scalable and robust. I use OmniNotes on my Android phone, I use FreeFileSync, Typora (paid software), IntelliJ Community. What's a price that you would pay pay for your open source software? If it was like Spotify, spotify is like $9.99 a month and apparently 210 million susbcribers according to Bing search "spotify number of subscribers". That's a fair amount of people's living costs to pay for. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36827698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36827698

ochoseis 3y ago
> I've never paid for any of the work that went into Ubuntu, Python or Java (I use Corretto) or MySQL or C. You’ve almost certainly paid for them, just not directly. Some share of the cost in the supply chain that delivers you goods and services will inevitably end up with the large enterprises who sponsor or develop those projects.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  by eliminating all actors on the stage and referring solely to "large enterprises", welded unequivocally to ".. who pay for this" the entire ecosystem is reduced to absurd oversimplification. It is both insulting to the others who participate, and bone-headed wrong about where "resources" come from in this unusual, modern ecosystem.
  - ochoseis 3y ago
    The assertion was that even if it doesn’t feel like it, you support open source indirectly. It was not that all funding or contributions are made by large enterprises. I applaud efforts to more directly support projects that give you utility. It’s becoming easier for individuals to do that (as evidenced by the article).

Otek 3y ago

This needs Show HN:

Brian_K_White 3y ago

There does need to be some way for ordinary users to pay something to somewhere in a single convenient way, voluntarily and in voluntary amounts, that somehow ends up being pooled and distributed to or otherwise benefitting all the 37,000 developers and projects whos free work they use all day every day. This isn't it. I donate a little to the EFF, monthly automatic, and a few other things irregularly as I feel particular gratitude. It leaves a million people unaccounted for, but all you can do today is pick a few things that matter to you and let others get the others. And/or pay back/forward by contributing a little work of your own to the commons which I also do, but you can't expect most to do that, and I don't claim mine is valuable. Actually come to think of that, the reason I work on the things I work on is mostly because I just want to, so maybe most of those million are fine and there's no problem. But come to me with any kind of demand, well, I guess that's when paying enters the chat.

robalni 3y ago
This is compatible with that. One such service that distributes payments could sell subscriptions in this system. That's one of the ideas I have had all the time with this project but I guess I forgot to write down; payment distributers should be one of those you can subscribe to.

Otek 3y ago

I know people hate Subscriptions but honestly I quite like them. I can pay for one month usually not very high price to use software when I need it. Problem is to be solved by developers, they should give more often option to buy lifetime license, or allow you to use software for lifetime after you payed for 1 year of subscription (without updates). It’s just not profitable enough I believe. Maybe we will have appropriate laws in the future - that’s the solution I would like to see

api 3y ago
I don't mind subscriptions if they deliver consistent value and if I can cancel them easily when I want. A lot of hatred of subscriptions comes from hard-to-cancel dark patterns that should be illegal.
mrweasel 3y ago
Subscriptions just becomes unmanageable when you have to many. I do like your example of some software where you just need it for a month, but I don't think that should be a subscriptions then. That should just be paying for one or two months upfront. The issue that I have with subscriptions is, as I said, they become unmanageable and they are frequently dishonest, betting on you to forget to cancel them. You do a one year subscription for something, forget to cancel in time, and now you're stuck paying for two years. Both SaaS and many other type of subscriptions really need to drop the recurring part and just let you "rent" the product. That seems more honest to me.
- Otek 3y ago
  I just use single-use card whenever I don’t use AppStore for subscription. That way they won’t charge me again and if I end up using and liking the software I will remember to change card or provide another single use card
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tiltowait 3y ago
Paying for one month every once in a while for software that would otherwise be very expensive is about the only benefit I can see for subscriptions. For instance, Apple seems to be moving Final Cut Pro to a subscription model, and a $5/mo subscription is pretty great if you just need to use it once or twice or very sporadically. Subscriptions always feel a little scummy to me, due in part to the way they're often advertised. I think that "Only $5/mo!" followed by tiny print saying "Billed annually" should be illegal, because it's clearly deceptive advertising.

gizmo 3y ago

Software has no marginal cost. You can make something that's used by untold millions of people. Even if many people pirate enough people won't for you to recoup your development cost and then some. Software is easier to produce, sell, and distribute than any physical product. You don't have to worry about warehouses filled with unsold inventory. You don't have to worry about quality control and returns. It still blows my mind how much easier it is to run a business that deals with bytes instead of atoms. The OP talks about software having no copy protection, but Amazon sells DVD players and cordless drills for $30. Imagine for a second how hard it is to compete with that. Competing with Google or Microsoft or some startup is a walk in the park in comparison. In software the hard part is making an excellent product. And let's face it, that's where most people fail. It has nothing to do with monetization.

inglor_cz 3y ago
Making an excellent product is hard, but what is really hard, is maintaining it for years and decades afterwards. Maintenance, addition of new functionality, bugfixing, porting to other platforms etc. takes easily 10x-50x time than the initial release, and eats the vast majority of the developers' time and energy. This is where "not being paid for your work" translates into abandoned projects.
- pmontra 3y ago
  The traditional way to fund maintenance was to release a new and better version of the product. Example, all the releases of the various office suites from the days of MS-DOS up to Windows up to the cloud. If sales decline, sell to a competitor (good timing required) or close and switch to something else. A company that paid salaries for 5-10 years is still nothing to be ashamed of. In the case of Apple, keep selling new hardware. I can't remember if they ever sold their software in the first years of Macs or if it was bundled with the hardware.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    > I can't remember if they ever sold their software in the first years of Macs or if it was bundled with the hardware. In the early OSX era they used to sell their office suite separately. Eventually it got bundled with hardware for free. They still sell some software, like Final Cut Pro.

chadash 3y ago

The link doesn’t talk about the SAAS model, which is probably the most profitable (and ubiquitous) one these days. I know people like to rail against it, but I actually like the SAAS model. It keeps incentives aligned. It used to be that I might shell out $200 for a piece of productivity software. Now, I might pay $10 a month instead. The thing is that under the old model, a company was incentivized by make a sale but retention didn’t matter. Now, a sale is almost worthless, but retention is very valuable. Yes, over time I will pay much more with SAAS, but I also have companies that are incentivized to keep the software working. It doesn’t matter that I have a perpetual license on accounting software I bought in 2005… it no longer functions with my operating system anyway. SAAS helps solve this problem.

nightski 3y ago
I feel it's the opposite. The incentive is to lock you in and provide as little value as possible for as much money as possible. Get you hooked, take your data hostage, and then jack up the price as much as possible while delivering little to no additional functionality. Bugs? who cares. Broken functionality? No big deal. You are locked in baby!
- teeray 3y ago
  It reminds me of the dining hall at my university. The food would always be unbelievably good on parents weekend and any time there were tours that would eat there. Every other time it was mediocre at best. The check for the meal plan money cleared and the goal was to give back the bare minimum.
- lawn 3y ago
  What exactly is the difference from paying up front? There there's even less incentives to fix bugs, fix broken functionality and god forbid new functionality.
  - deleted 3y ago
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abmackenzie 3y ago

I'm a bit confused - you subscribe to one developer, and then get the benefit of being subscribed to all? What's the incentive for a developer to sign up to this then, if they don't get a share of your subscription when you use their service? Isn't this a bit like asking Disney+ to give all Netflix subscribers access with no compensation?

robalni 3y ago
The difference this is supposed to make is that currently most people don't pay for free software. I don't for example. That is because I don't need to. This system is supposed to make more people pay, which should mean that all developers get more money. Giving access to someone who subscribes to someone else is part of what makes this work and if the developers can accept that, they should all benefit from it.
- abmackenzie 3y ago
  But I don't get any $ from it unless they sign up on MY site, right? Since there's no sharing mechanism. So I don't see how joining in would benefit me - if anything I'd lose a bit of revenue from people who would have paid and now find they don't need to because they're signed up for some other product which I have no hand in and no revenue from?
  - robalni 3y ago
    > But I don't get any $ from it unless they sign up on MY site, right? Since there's no sharing mechanism. Exactly. > So I don't see how joining in would benefit me - if anything I'd lose a bit of revenue from people who would have paid and now find they don't need to because they're signed up for some other product which I have no hand in and no revenue from? It would not benefit you if the average person paid for multiple free software projects. In that case, they would only have to pay for one instead of multiple. I don't think that's the case though, so this solution should make more people pay for free software and that should benefit the developers on average.

andy99 3y ago

How do you prevent or discourage the rise of "influencer developers"? The problem with subscriptions as a solution is that they end up being a popularity contest. That's not necessarily bad, if people want to spend their money that way but it doesn't solve the global problem of paying for those who write software. If it takes off it will just mean more Lex Fridman types get a big subscriber base, and a bunch more try and emulate that model. If fact I think it could easily distract a lot of people from focusing on writing software.

robalni 3y ago
I know that is a possible problem. Partially, that problem exists with everything; advertisements make people buy from the most popular brands even if they are not the best. Other than that, the developers in this cooperation have to trust each other so if someone is just popular and doesn't make any good software, they would not be accepted by the other developers to join.
- CBarkleyU 3y ago
  >doesn't make any good software What if the person does make decent software, but is a huge influencer? Why not opt for the Spotify model? Usage = money. Why turn this into a popularity contest?
  - robalni 3y ago
    > What if the person does make decent software, but is a huge influencer? Then they would probably be able to make more money selling subscriptions than other developers that are less known. I don't know how different that would be though from if they sold physical products. One important thing here is that there is a limit to how many subscriptions one developer can sell. This is done to emulate physical products as much as possible. Also, they would probably sell the subscriptions for a higher price than other developers, since they can, which would mean that people who don't know about that person would buy from someone who is cheaper. > Why not opt for the Spotify model? Usage = money. Why turn this into a popularity contest? That means there has to be usage statistics collection in all software. Since the software has to be open source, that could be abused a lot, including removed. I also don't like the idea of having any requirement like that on the software. It would for example require that the software has access to the internet which doesn't work well for some software.

Knee_Pain 3y ago

I think the biggest problem is the financial infrastructure. We pay for software almost exclusively through digital means, but the fees are too damn high. Imagine if transaction fees were zero. Imagine if a piece of software you used costed 10 cents per months. Or someone's patreon or github sponsor was 5 cents per month. And then imagine if starting and stopping the subscription was intuitive and super easy with any digital payment method you happened to use. I could see the flood gates open and now developers who got basically nothing will get a ton of small contributions that together would make up quite a nice lump sum every month

pixl97 3y ago
At the same time cost gates are quality gates quite often.
carlosjobim 3y ago
From experience I know this truth: Somebody who won't pay $5 per month will never pay $1 per month nor will they ever pay 10 cents per month. Something in the mind switches and people turn full on psychotic when it comes to paying for digital services, and there's not much that you can do to fight it with logic. Just look at Github projects for some really good stuff that are used by thousands or millions. At most the developers will have received 10-20 donations. Almost all of the commenters here on HN have never donated a single dollar to the projects that they love and enjoy.
ativzzz 3y ago
A former company I worked for started having a larger Indian userbase. We experimented with supporting them more and it would be similar to what you said - significantly lower prices for them. We chose to mostly ignore the Indian userbase and let them use the product as is without catering to them The reality is that just because someone pays less doesn't mean they cost less to support. And then, if you support a large number of cheap users, it's even more expensive to support. As a business, you'd rather have 10 customers paying $10 dollars each instead of 100 customers paying $1 each. Larger businesses can overcome this with economies of scale, but smaller businesses cannot

thorin 3y ago

Strangely this is the same thing that happened to the music business. Maybe we need to start selling merch and going out on tour to make a living!

CharlesW 3y ago
https://linuxfoundation.store/ https://linuxfoundation.store/

rco8786 3y ago

I am super confused about the concept. I pay "someone", of my own choosing, and I get access to...what, exactly? "everything"? What is that? What incentive do the developers that I'm not paying have to give me something? > Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services. I also reject this premise. My evidence being the trillions of dollars spent annually on software and other services.

robalni 3y ago
What you get access to is everything that is protected using this site. Anyone can create paywalls. Here is an example of a link that only lets subscribers view this comments page: https://1sub.dev/link?u=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id%3D&s=p_GonuAYEe0&k=&n=hK5ZOXymlHi5s2Es&a=a.18

preommr 3y ago

I don't get it. I also see other comments not getting it so I don't think it's just me. Is this like Kindle unlimited where someone pays a single subscription and gets access to all content providers on the platform (in this case content is software), where creators get a proportion of the subscription fee based on how much a user used an app? So e.g. 10$ per month, I use FooReader 90% of the time, so they get 9$. Idk, even if I am not getting the details, I don't think that any collective approach to app is going to work. Unlike with other industries like movies or music, products in software are very different from each other and is consumed in a variety of ways (library vs end-user app) that have a lot of complicated nuance (in terms of licensing and company goals).

robalni 3y ago
> where someone pays a single subscription and gets access to all content providers on the platform (in this case content is software), where creators get a proportion of the subscription fee It is like that, except that users buy the subscriptions directly from the developers. 1Sub doesn't handle any money. This also means that the developers get 100% of the money (except for any transaction fees depending on payment method).

meatjuice 3y ago

Won't this just accelerate the reinventions of wheels that's happening everywhere on the Internet?

grishka 3y ago

Speaking of software business models, I like the idea of charging money for convenience. As in, make the app open-source, but sell compiled binaries and maybe tech support.

tiffanyh 3y ago
That’s the AWS model. Take a free open source product, and charge for hosting & maintaining it.
- grishka 3y ago
  Yeah, if it's a server app, you can also sell it as a hosted service.

ericls 3y ago

By "people" are you excluding organizations such as governments, corporations etc?

robalni 3y ago
> By "people" are you excluding organizations such as governments, corporations etc? If you mean "people" as in "A world where people pay for software", then no. I think companies, especially software companies, would like to subscribe in this system if it gets big because if they have dependencies that require subscriptions, they probably don't want anything to get in the way for their employees.

ozim 3y ago

I have a different take on the topic. People should not pay for software - average Joe should have all kinds of software basically free. Now you ask "who should pay for development", corporations, companies or foundations where people still could donate but would not have to. Where corporations and companies pay salaries and provide end users with services. Solo devs should not write and maintain anything without getting paid. Yes it is "corporate dystopia" but on the other hand when I see all kinds of rants or horror stories from OSS maintainers and companies that don't want to contribute it seems only reasonable way. Corporation/Company/Foundation pay salaries for devs and provide people with software while charging for services like keeping data or any other actual services that can be connected to software they provide or in case of foundations by donations.

ativzzz 3y ago
This is like the musician problem. There are so many people willing to play for pretty much nothing or for free that it's very hard for the average musician to make money. On the consumer side, why should you always pay for music when so many people are doing it for free? There's an oversupply of eager musicians making music Same with OSS development. Why should you pay for something if people just do it for free? Doesn't matter who the consumer is. > Solo devs should not write and maintain anything without getting paid. But they do, and they will regardless. And until they stop, nothing will change. There's an oversupply of eager coders coding for free Companies will pay (their own developers) once the OSS solution doesn't work or needs extra extensions that doesn't exist.
- vbezhenar 3y ago
  > But they do, and they will regardless. And until they stop, nothing will change. There's an oversupply of eager coders coding for free There's no thriving market of OSS apps for iOS. So the solution is simple. Charge some money from developer to allow distribution of his apps. This seem to kill open source attitude very well.
  - em-bee 3y ago

intrasight 3y ago

I like Yale University and Oracle Corporation's model: "How much do you make? Give us 10%"

tomrod 3y ago

Can I just say, I absolutely love the functionality of this side and its linked sites? I really appreciate fast, simple sites.

rchaud 3y ago

Two models that weren't discussed: Sketch App - $99 once, $99/yr if you want upgrades (I did not) Wordpress model - Core is FOSS, money is made with custom plug-ins that can be priced freely.

islammidov 3y ago

I believe software eating the world (and will continue to do so) exactly because of how it's paid now. Not sure that much innovation needed here

picadores 3y ago

I wonder, if the "tax-funded" model could work for software. The state raises money from the public, but the public determinates directly via usage (minutes spend with), usefullness (money gained) how much of that tax goes to what developer. Cut out the monopoly buisness middle man, but also remove any political moral meddlers in various "round tables" as they are omni present in public media systems. The idea has problems though. How to pay for background ("invisble" layers). How to prevetn "hyper transparent citizens". Etc.

xtreme 3y ago
Minutes spent is a horrible metric. It creates a perverse incentive to intentionally slow down the software.

rzwitserloot 3y ago

This product names crucial issues with how software development is currently monetized, and then offers an alternative that... solves absolutely none of these problems. Optional extras like 'downloads or other resources' are presumably digital and therefore do not solve the problem - folks can still pirate it. If that's not the point, then it is a donation, in the simplified parlance of the first paragraph of 1sub.dev. And this all from a company/effort that has such lofty goals that the html title of the page is 'a world where people pay for software'. This (how do you monetize software development / how do we e.g. let FOSS developers capture more than the current 0.0000000001% of the value they create) is an incredibly difficult problem and this effort sounds like some naive newbie took 5 seconds to think about it and thought: Yeah let's fix things! At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old fart: Hoo boy if it was that simple, it'd have been solved already. Alternative plans that work a lot better: * The NPM ecosystem has a ton of software-as-a-service offerings, e.g. where you can use their site to serve as online tool to e.g. make documentation, to have their site host that documentation, etc. I hate this model (you get nickel-and-dimed and both companies and open source developers alike don't usually like having 50 downstream service providers who, if they go down or have issues, require you having to explain to _your_ customers what's going wrong), but it solves the problems this site names (you can't pirate this, and you get something of value for your money in return). * Tidelift tries to provide security assurances and support: The payers don't just 'donate', they pay to just be done with the security issues with FOSS dependencies: Tidelift gives you software that scans all your dev work for all your deps and which versions you are on, and tidelift ensures not just that there are no major security holes in those deps, but also that the authors of those deps have made some basic promises about maintaining it in trade for real consideration (namely: money). Github sponsors and the like are more or less barking up the same tree. These setups also solve an unstated problem 1sub.dev tries to solve, which is: You tend to use _a lot_ of software; if you have, say, 600 dependencies (not crazy in this modern age of software dev), and you want to individually set up a 'deal' with all of em, one person has a full time job as they will have to renew over 2 contracts __every working day__ assuming all your subscriptions are yearly. * Microsoft and co do it as a package deal: You pay one fee for everything they offer and aggressively legally chase down anybody that pirates. * patreon and co grease the wheels of the donation flow by making it simpler and allowing developers to give something that's hard to pirate: T-shirts and stickers, mentions in the 'about...' page and so on. * Some developers of FOSS, as well as _many_ commercial outfits, will accept money in trade for priority support. All of these models have issues. But at least they actually aim to solve the problems. This attempt doesn't even begin to tackle the actual issues, unless I'm missing something. As a 1million+ user FOSS developer who maintains the library primarily based on privilege (I have enough income to work for the roughly minimum wage I currently get for it, though I could have earned vastly more if I worked for a commercial entity for those hours) - I'm aware that this is not a good situation, that you need to sort out your finances separately just to be a good FOSS author. But, I don't see how 1sub.dev is going to add much compared to what's already there (patreon, github sponsors, FOSS aggregators like apache and eclipse foundation, tidelift, etc).

Pxtl 3y ago

This sounds like Patreon. Imho, the "just buy it" or "patreon to access the development discord/forum/whatever for OSS" seem like the best approaches. Like, I'm in Mastodon's patreon, and I'm happy to buy software. And while it may sting, I'm okay with "major release = new version buy it again". Not fond fond of installed local non-cloud software in the SAAS business model.

CharlesW 3y ago
> This sounds like Patreon. It's exactly Patreon or one of its many competitors. The "subscribe to a creator and get special perks" problem is common and solved, but as you note the "CaaS" (creator as a service) model isn't for everyone.

TheMode 3y ago

Why do we insist on making software paid? Wouldn't it make more sense to work toward making software more stable so I could decide to make a calculator app during my free time, and have it somehow still used 200y later? Software is stupidly simple to distribute, but for some reason one of the hardest to keep. Obviously if we cannot use any software of the past, we are stuck with developers having to maintain old or new solutions.

charcircuit 3y ago
>Software is stupidly simple to distribute Society is spending billions of dollars each year for working on complex hardware and software to make that distribution possible. Physical goods are the stupidly simply thing to distribute.
- TheMode 3y ago
  There is intrinsic complexity involved in distributing physical goods. Software complexity is mostly made up. Would billions solve software distribution & longevity? How?

frithsun 3y ago

> imagines a sally struthers charity commercial, but with random hipsters and nerds staring sadly at the camera, hoping that somebody, somewhere, will pay them as much money as they think they deserve

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

blueyes 3y ago

People pay for scarcity, not utility. In economics, this is expressed as the water-diamond paradox. Software makers simply need to find ways to make some piece of what they sell scarce (managed workloads). Everything else depends on the conspicuous consumption of idealists; ie it doesn't scale.

andruby 3y ago

I don't understand the "economic" model. If I'm a developer and get to chose what to charge, that means I can ask people for $0.01, and they would get access to everything from all developers of this "platform"? The example on [0] where a developer pays credits when they get a subscriber is confusing. Should Devs "top up" somehow? [0] https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works

robalni 3y ago
> If I'm a developer and get to chose what to charge, that means I can ask people for $0.01, and they would get access to everything from all developers of this "platform"? You can do that but you will not make a lot of money that way. The number of subscriptions you can sell is limited so if you sell all of them for $0.01 you will probably wish you had asked for more and when you have sold out, only the more expensive subscriptions sold by other developers remain and they will make more money than you. > The example on [0] where a developer pays credits when they get a subscriber is confusing. Should Devs "top up" somehow? I don't know exactly what you mean by "top up" but the credits are turned into subscriptions when sold. This is how we make sure the developers can't sell infinite subscriptions. The plan is then that with time, the developers will get more credits so that they can sell more subscriptions. How fast they will get more could depend on the current value of their account, where the value could be calculated from the credits and the number of subscribers they have.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > How fast they will get more could depend on the current value of their account, where the value could be calculated from the credits and the number of subscribers they have. So are you then implicitly setting the price yourself because anyone who doesn't charge enough can't get more credits? Suppose someone develops an app which takes hardly any effort to make -- it's a hundred lines of code -- but it does something common that everybody needs so if available for $0.01 it would have a hundred million users. Which would gross a million dollars and more than pay for the development of the simple app, so the developer is satisfied with that. But to do that you'd have to let them sell a hundred million subscriptions for $0.01 each. Now let's go toward the other end of the spectrum. Some app which is specialized and requires a million dollars of developer time but only has a market of 10,000 customers. Those customers would pay $100 each for it, if they had to, but not if they can buy into the system somewhere else for $10 (or $0.01) instead. In general, who is going to buy a fungible subscription for significantly more than it's available somewhere else? How do you handle the fact that the development cost of a thing isn't proportional to the number of people who use it?

dboreham 3y ago

In the spirit of throwing random ideas at the wall to see what sticks, this is fine. But it's obviously not going to work.

haunter 3y ago

So video games right now in 2023?

jansommer 3y ago

> Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services. If users can find the software elsewhere, then it must be cheaper or better if they don't want to use yours. If this is about pirating, then it's just a matter of time before they buy, unless the ransom for decrypting their personal files bankrupts them. Please, no more subscriptions.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

simonbarker87 3y ago

So it’s like SetApp?

deafpolygon 3y ago

Pirating and 'illegal' copies of software is not what's impacting your bottom line.

majestic5762 3y ago

Actually I'm seeing a big new wave of open source projects that you can host yourself, but can be used as SaaS if you are willing to pay. I'm always paying because I don't want to bother and because the devs have my /respect

coxley 3y ago

> # Developers > Sorry, there are no developers to subscribe to currently. If you actually want adoption, more needs done than posting the thing you built and suggesting people use it. Building effective, self-sufficient marketplaces is tough. Benefit has to be seen on both sides from the get-go.

slim 3y ago
I'm baffled by the fact the developer did not put himself on that list

indymike 3y ago

Un-ironically, I make a living from people who pay for my software. I have for 30 years, as both a developer for hire, as an independent developer and even from royalties. It's not hard. Make something useful, make it well, place it where buyers can find it, and price it in a way that makes sense.

kapitanjakc 3y ago

There's tons of free software out and there's tons of paid software too. Problem is with quality and adaptation.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software and we can enable the maximum value creation possible. Other engineers like those that design commodities like dishwashers and cars or important manufacturing or medical equipment can also open source their designs so that repair costs are low and innovative improvements are easy to apply. I genuinely believe this would result in a steeper and more rapid innovation curve as well as a better world for all, than a world where we try to monetize things which have zero marginal cost to reproduce.

rootusrootus 3y ago
From each according to his ability. So far we haven't worked out how to square that with human nature, and it keeps failing utterly.
- SequoiaHope 3y ago
  And yet 100 years ago Peter Kropotkin asked, "Are we good enough?" (to handle capitalism?) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-we-good-enough https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-w... A single paragraph excerpt: "Men are not good enough for Communism, but are they good enough for Capitalism? If all men were good-hearted, kind, and just, they would never exploit one another, although possessing the means of doing so. With such men the private ownership of capital would be no danger. The capitalist would hasten to share his profits with the workers, and the best-remunerated workers with those suffering from occasional causes. If men were provident they would not produce velvet and articles of luxury while food is wanted in cottages: they would not build palaces as long as there are slums. "
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    Capitalism at least tries to use human selfishness to achieve a better outcome, even if imperfect. Could it be better? Obviously. I’m not convinced communism is the answer.

Joel_Mckay 3y ago

People often no longer own commercial licenses, but rather rent their assets until the updated terms of their agreements become a liability. Android -> Sales funnel for app store/services, and consumer profiling MacOS -> Sales funnel for app store/services, and consumer profiling Windows 11 -> Sales funnel for app store/services, and consumer profiling Ubuntu -> Sales funnel for app store/services, and consumer profiling Most people conflate information appliances with general purpose computing. It is a shame 98% of the market went this route... You still pay, but are just unaware how you are being monetized. =)

neerajdotname2 3y ago

Inspite of all the competition the SAAS pricing is not coming down. There are around 30 calendly alterntatives. However if you check the price of these alternatives they are not too far from what the market leader is charging. More on this at https://blog.neeto.com/p/neetocal-a-calendly-alternative-is https://blog.neeto.com/p/neetocal-a-calendly-alternative-is.

charlieyu1 3y ago

Sounds like Patreon with extra steps. May or may not be a good idea.

ajkjk 3y ago

My question is: why isn't there yet a thing (or is there?) that works like AWS, but has the UX experience of a smartphone: you can install "apps" on it -- which you pay for hosting / bandwidth -- and it handles integration with all your devices, while leaving you in charge of how they're configured and what happens with the data? Sorta like expanding the mobile phone experience to encompass your whole internet experience, so you can choose what services you use, and where they're hosted, and those two things are fundamentally decoupled. One such app could be a sort of 'charge card' for websites, which would pay them pennies, or larger tips if you like, instead of having to see ads. Another might be a connection to a search engine which allows you to tailor _your_ search experience instead of it being optimized in e.g. Google's interests with all the commercial stuff at the top.

arrosenberg 3y ago
> My question is: why isn't there yet a thing (or is there?) that works like AWS, but has the UX experience of a smartphone: you can install "apps" on it -- which you pay for hosting / bandwidth -- and it handles integration with all your devices, while leaving you in charge of how they're configured and what happens with the data? Heroku?
- ajkjk 3y ago
  Not at all. I can't "install a cloud storage app on my Heroku and then access it on my phone" without significant technical skills. As an engineer I could figure it out, but I won't, because I don't want to deal with that. Instead I will fantasize about how it ought to work.
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    Maybe https://sandstorm.io/ https://sandstorm.io/ then?
nyanpasu64 3y ago
I want a plug-and-play way to install services like (front-ends) BreezeWiki, Rimgo, Nitter, and Invidious, and (self-hosted) Miniflux, Gitea, a centralized Syncthing node, and an image sync tool (possibly Immich), onto an old laptop I own, without messing with users, groups, AUR builds, upgrading between Postgres versions... like a world where sandstorm.io had taken off. Then access them on any of my devices, like Tailscale but without binding arbitration and a class action waiver...

michaelmrose 3y ago

How does one divide up the money and how much is overhead this seems like the central question.

dbrueck 3y ago

A root of the problem is using economic models for physical items with digital goods and services. IMO the most sensical low level* economic model for digital things would be one where you pay a really tiny amount every time you derive value from something. A fraction of a penny each time you play a song, each time you edit an image in some software, each time you visit a website. There are a boatload of obstacles to getting to a model like this, but as a thought exercise it's really interesting to consider an alternate universe where this model got established instead of, say, everything being ad-based. Not only would it provide a model for monetizing software, it would also for example completely reframe DRM (making it both far more ubiquitous but also far less antagonizing to the user, since it would be aligned with what the user is trying to do instead of being at odds with it). * The idea being that this low level economic would exist but for practical reasons (like overcoming human psychology) you might need to overlay a higher level model like a monthly "unlimited consumption" subscription or tax.

mixmastamyk 3y ago
Interesting to think about. However, for that to be feasible I believe the draconian "copyright forever" laws would have to have never happened. I'm against paying rent to corporations to access the work of dead people on principle. Or past say, fifty years even if they lived.
- dbrueck 3y ago
  I think I'm in the same boat as you, but can you articulate the 'why' behind that sentiment? (saying it's "on principle" could also be a way to not have to address that question, haha) As in, if someone created something and you derive value (utility, enjoyment, etc.) from it, what is the basis for at some point no longer providing compensation for that utility? FWIW, I haven't come up with a completely convincing answer, and yet I still feel like you do! Maybe there is no firm justification for terminating compensation, but instead it's more of an idea instilled by the culture, that after X years, the thing you created becomes owned by society at large just for the greater good, or maybe in recognition that your work came about because of prior accomplishments from others, or that as a society we want ongoing creativity and not stagnation.

faangiq 3y ago

The problem with code monkeys is they have low social IQs. So business guys will just keep exploiting them.

BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago

is a world where people pay to use specific words the idea of "property" (ownership) which is the cornerstone of the whole of civilization breaks down when applied to digital goods.

pabs3 3y ago

The Find developer page doesn't list any developers, has anyone signed up for this yet or do you need a login to view the list? https://1sub.dev/list https://1sub.dev/list