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Because I am not stupid to pay monthly fees instead of single upfront licenses. Because my desktop screams while my net connection is so so. Because a native

by nickpp 15y ago

Because I am not stupid to pay monthly fees instead of single upfront licenses. Because my desktop screams while my net connection is so so. Because a native UI kicks the sh*t out of any web interface, in looks, perfomance and integration. Because I am paranoid and I like my data in MY local net. Because I do not mind a bunch of (easily scriptable) installs. I short because the technical problems I am trying to solve go way beyond a trivial LAMP app...

treeder 15y ago
> Because I am not stupid to pay monthly fees instead of single upfront licenses. You also have to think about the cost of hosting, maintaining, monitoring, etc. Usually a service fee by a provider is much smaller than the cost of doing all this yourself. Of course there is some inflection point where it may be cheaper to do it yourself. And during development and while you're still small, most service providers offer a generous free plan. > Because my desktop screams while my net connection is so so. Can't argue with that one. > Because a native UI kicks the sh*t out of any web interface, in looks, perfomance and integration. Totally agree. Like I said in the post, I still write my code locally. > Because I am paranoid and I like my data in MY local net. Are you paranoid about your development data? > Because I do not mind a bunch of (easily scriptable) installs. ... > I short because the technical problems I am trying to solve go way beyond a trivial LAMP app... I would argue that this is a good reason to you use services since they will deal with all the hard stuff of running these non-trivial services. The more complicated your application, the more value you'll get out of using services.
- quanticle 15y ago
  >You also have to think about the cost of hosting, maintaining, monitoring, etc. Well, for a development environment, the costs of all that should be zero, in terms of dollars. In terms of time, you'll have to spend some time maintaining your development environment, whether you have it in the cloud or locally. Adding a monetary cost to that just seems foolish. Remember, we're not talking about deploying to the cloud. We're talking about developing on the cloud. Spending real money, in addition to my time for a project that I'm going to open source or possibly abandon is foolish.
olalonde 15y ago
> Because I am not stupid to pay monthly fees instead of single upfront licenses. You just insulted everyone here who pays monthly fees for software, including Github & Dropbox customers. In addition, the overwhelming success of SaaS vs native apps leads me to think that your personal tastes and concerns are not representative of the average consumer.
- eli_gottlieb 15y ago
  >In addition, the overwhelming success of SaaS vs native apps leads me to think that your personal tastes and concerns are not representative of the average consumer. Can we call this the Market Fallacy? "It sells most, therefore consumers must have wanted it above all possible alternatives." Wrong. Consumers wanted it above all available alternatives. Key problem here is that software makers have been getting themselves out of the business of single-upfront-license proprietary, desktop software for nearly 15 years now, as hard as they can. They don't like competing with free (the open-source alternatives or the pirates). And didn't PG write a whole damned essay on this recently? Just because SaaS is easier to treat as excludable economic property doesn't make it better.
- fusiongyro 15y ago
  When the average consumer has to choose between two goods they don't understand, they always base their decision on price. As they become more savvy, they begin to understand why the market has other, more complex or expensive, options. SaaS may have been a success in the short term, but our industry tends to have centralization/decentralization cycles. We seem to be in a centralization phase right now, but the downside of that is well-known, it just hasn't manifested in a catastrophic way recently. Once it does, I'd expect a large (but not total) exodus from SaaS back to run-this-on-your-own-hardware solutions like we've had in the past.
  - eli_gottlieb 15y ago
    Inshallah. I was just thinking about this today in the context of networking and systems research playing against each other. Improvement on networking problems leads to a centralization cycle, but then systems become the bottleneck and we end up needing to improve that.

by nickpp 15y ago

treeder 15y ago

> Because I am not stupid to pay monthly fees instead of single upfront licenses. You also have to think about the cost of hosting, maintaining, monitoring, etc. Usually a service fee by a provider is much smaller than the cost of doing all this yourself. Of course there is some inflection point where it may be cheaper to do it yourself. And during development and while you're still small, most service providers offer a generous free plan. > Because my desktop screams while my net connection is so so. Can't argue with that one. > Because a native UI kicks the sh*t out of any web interface, in looks, perfomance and integration. Totally agree. Like I said in the post, I still write my code locally. > Because I am paranoid and I like my data in MY local net. Are you paranoid about your development data? > Because I do not mind a bunch of (easily scriptable) installs. ... > I short because the technical problems I am trying to solve go way beyond a trivial LAMP app... I would argue that this is a good reason to you use services since they will deal with all the hard stuff of running these non-trivial services. The more complicated your application, the more value you'll get out of using services.

quanticle 15y ago
>You also have to think about the cost of hosting, maintaining, monitoring, etc. Well, for a development environment, the costs of all that should be zero, in terms of dollars. In terms of time, you'll have to spend some time maintaining your development environment, whether you have it in the cloud or locally. Adding a monetary cost to that just seems foolish. Remember, we're not talking about deploying to the cloud. We're talking about developing on the cloud. Spending real money, in addition to my time for a project that I'm going to open source or possibly abandon is foolish.

olalonde 15y ago

> Because I am not stupid to pay monthly fees instead of single upfront licenses. You just insulted everyone here who pays monthly fees for software, including Github & Dropbox customers. In addition, the overwhelming success of SaaS vs native apps leads me to think that your personal tastes and concerns are not representative of the average consumer.

eli_gottlieb 15y ago
>In addition, the overwhelming success of SaaS vs native apps leads me to think that your personal tastes and concerns are not representative of the average consumer. Can we call this the Market Fallacy? "It sells most, therefore consumers must have wanted it above all possible alternatives." Wrong. Consumers wanted it above all available alternatives. Key problem here is that software makers have been getting themselves out of the business of single-upfront-license proprietary, desktop software for nearly 15 years now, as hard as they can. They don't like competing with free (the open-source alternatives or the pirates). And didn't PG write a whole damned essay on this recently? Just because SaaS is easier to treat as excludable economic property doesn't make it better.
fusiongyro 15y ago
When the average consumer has to choose between two goods they don't understand, they always base their decision on price. As they become more savvy, they begin to understand why the market has other, more complex or expensive, options. SaaS may have been a success in the short term, but our industry tends to have centralization/decentralization cycles. We seem to be in a centralization phase right now, but the downside of that is well-known, it just hasn't manifested in a catastrophic way recently. Once it does, I'd expect a large (but not total) exodus from SaaS back to run-this-on-your-own-hardware solutions like we've had in the past.
- eli_gottlieb 15y ago
  Inshallah. I was just thinking about this today in the context of networking and systems research playing against each other. Improvement on networking problems leads to a centralization cycle, but then systems become the bottleneck and we end up needing to improve that.