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This is written from a business perspective, where you are large enough to negotiate real protections into your support contract, you have budgets of seven figu

This is written from a business perspective, where you are large enough to negotiate real protections into your support contract, you have budgets of seven figures plus, and source licenses are on offer. As a consumer, none of this applies. Your subscription has a license that only binds and does not protect - i.e. you pay us, we might deliver something, or we might just take it away and you get nothing. Source licenses? Please - they cost more than you make in a lifetime and we'd never sell one to the likes of you. When you inevitably leak our precious source, we won't even be able to sue you for it! All the shittyness of services is downstream of having no market power. Ownership is a defense mechanism. If you own your licenses, there's no legal basis to take the software away from you.

fxtentacle 3y ago
You have perfectly described my experience when I found a show-stopper bug in Unity ^_^ A project budget in the single millions isn't good enough yet for the gods of Unity to consider allowing you to fix bugs in their engine yourself. Instead, you need to file a support ticket and then delay your launch by a year.
- nusl 3y ago
  Could you describe the bug? Were workarounds not possible or infeasible? Unity has definitely not shown itself to act in good faith.
  - fxtentacle 3y ago
    A certain type of particle system caused all directional lights to flicker. I'd guess RAM out of bounds write. And no, removing the particles wasn't an option. And removing the sun light wasn't an option either.
- kjellsbells 3y ago
  s/engine/printer driver/g and we basically have the origin story of Stallman and GNU. Without source, and the freedom to change it, you are always at someone else's mercy.
GeneralMaximus 3y ago
I've had mixed experiences with apps that I technically "own". On one hand there's iA Writer. I don't even remember when I bought the app -- five years ago? seven? ten? -- and I'm still getting regular updates for it. It has maintained and iterated on its core feature set while keeping up with macOS updates. The dev team even added thoughtful new features -- like Wikilinks, frontmatter support, and authorship tracking -- without turning the app into something it's not. At its core, iA Writer remains a fast, bare-bones, distraction-free Markdown editor with beautiful typography that feels as Mac-native as you can get. This is the sort of experience people are looking for when they say they want to "own" an app. On the other hand there's Scrivener. I bought this app during the pandemic, and almost immediately regretted the purchase. The UI looks dated in a bad way, like an old Mac OS X app from 2010. It's full of a million chunky buttons and colors and gradients, creating a ton of visual noise. It's updated maybe once or twice per year, mostly to fix bugs and maintain compatibility with newer macOS versions. Their aging file format doesn't work properly with any cloud storage service except Dropbox, and they refuse to do anything about it. Even if you use Dropbox, it's very easy to corrupt your projects if you forget to manually sync them before opening them on a different device. The iPad app looks like it was built in the early days of the device, and has bizarre implementations of basic controls (like tree views) that behave differently from how you'd expect. It's clear that the dev team behind Scrivener has given up on the app and are keeping it on life support. I think there are more Scriveners in this world than iA Writers. Or you have apps like Sublime Text, where every new version requires you to pay for a fresh license. At that point, you might as well turn it into subscription software.
- eviks 3y ago
  > where every new version requires you to pay for a fresh license. At that point, you might as well turn it into subscription software. The huge difference being: if you stop subscribing, you lose the current version even if you don't need the features in the new version
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    Worst case scenario is perhaps being forced on the new version and not being able to keep using the old one even though the new version breaks your workflow.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Half the success is understanding what you are agreeing to when you dismiss the terms of use the first time you use software or a service. Most people can't be bothered to read any of that but it can still come back to haunt them. Businesses can afford to pay lawyers and when big amounts are involved, their job is ensuring that isn't wasted. Generally, you get what you pay for and agree to. Small businesses and consumers indeed have no negotiation power to haggle a custom deal. You get what you pay for and when the amounts are low that doesn't typically include a lot of hand holding or personal attention. Consumers generally don't need source licenses. Just not a thing. People who need those aren't consumers but developers that generally either work for a company. What you buy as a consumer or company when purchasing software is a limited right to use the software. That's it. Nothing more nothing less. You buy whatever it says in the terms that you are buying. It's your decision to agree with that or not. Or indeed to bother informing yourself about that. But you do actually have power. You can vote with your feet and for example cancel subscriptions for services or buy software from competitors. Or use open source software. That keeps service providers a bit honest. I cancelled my Netflix account a few months ago. Their quality has dropped and they raised the prices on me. So thanks but no thanks. I might enable them for a few months in the future if/when they have something worth watching. I'm thinking of doing the same with Amazon Prime.
- amiga386 3y ago
  > You buy whatever it says in the terms that you are buying. It's your decision to agree with that or not. Or indeed to bother informing yourself about that. Caveat emptor and all that, but that's not quite true. Consumer rights laws (depending on what country you live in) tend to have more power than contracts of adhesion, and courts look down on these one-sided contracts with disdain. Whether you read the terms and conditions or not, if those terms are utter bullshit, it's unlikely they're enforcable. "This shoddy software deleted all my files! Oh, it says here they can delete all the files on my computer if I stop paying them, it's in the contract so I guess I have no comeback" - no, that's bullshit, that kind of term is unconscionable in clickwrap, go sue them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability > Examples of gross one-sidedness would be provisions that limit damages against the seller, or limit the rights of the purchaser to seek relief in the courts against the seller. In the 2009 case of Harris v. Blockbuster, Inc., the plaintiff argued that Blockbuster's provision to compel arbitration and forbid class action lawsuits was illusory and unconscionable. However, whether that contract was unconscionable is unknown, as the court ruled that it was illusory and therefore not enforceable, and disregarded all further consideration.

fxtentacle 3y ago

You have perfectly described my experience when I found a show-stopper bug in Unity ^_^ A project budget in the single millions isn't good enough yet for the gods of Unity to consider allowing you to fix bugs in their engine yourself. Instead, you need to file a support ticket and then delay your launch by a year.

nusl 3y ago
Could you describe the bug? Were workarounds not possible or infeasible? Unity has definitely not shown itself to act in good faith.
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  A certain type of particle system caused all directional lights to flicker. I'd guess RAM out of bounds write. And no, removing the particles wasn't an option. And removing the sun light wasn't an option either.
kjellsbells 3y ago
s/engine/printer driver/g and we basically have the origin story of Stallman and GNU. Without source, and the freedom to change it, you are always at someone else's mercy.

GeneralMaximus 3y ago

I've had mixed experiences with apps that I technically "own". On one hand there's iA Writer. I don't even remember when I bought the app -- five years ago? seven? ten? -- and I'm still getting regular updates for it. It has maintained and iterated on its core feature set while keeping up with macOS updates. The dev team even added thoughtful new features -- like Wikilinks, frontmatter support, and authorship tracking -- without turning the app into something it's not. At its core, iA Writer remains a fast, bare-bones, distraction-free Markdown editor with beautiful typography that feels as Mac-native as you can get. This is the sort of experience people are looking for when they say they want to "own" an app. On the other hand there's Scrivener. I bought this app during the pandemic, and almost immediately regretted the purchase. The UI looks dated in a bad way, like an old Mac OS X app from 2010. It's full of a million chunky buttons and colors and gradients, creating a ton of visual noise. It's updated maybe once or twice per year, mostly to fix bugs and maintain compatibility with newer macOS versions. Their aging file format doesn't work properly with any cloud storage service except Dropbox, and they refuse to do anything about it. Even if you use Dropbox, it's very easy to corrupt your projects if you forget to manually sync them before opening them on a different device. The iPad app looks like it was built in the early days of the device, and has bizarre implementations of basic controls (like tree views) that behave differently from how you'd expect. It's clear that the dev team behind Scrivener has given up on the app and are keeping it on life support. I think there are more Scriveners in this world than iA Writers. Or you have apps like Sublime Text, where every new version requires you to pay for a fresh license. At that point, you might as well turn it into subscription software.

eviks 3y ago
> where every new version requires you to pay for a fresh license. At that point, you might as well turn it into subscription software. The huge difference being: if you stop subscribing, you lose the current version even if you don't need the features in the new version
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Worst case scenario is perhaps being forced on the new version and not being able to keep using the old one even though the new version breaks your workflow.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Half the success is understanding what you are agreeing to when you dismiss the terms of use the first time you use software or a service. Most people can't be bothered to read any of that but it can still come back to haunt them. Businesses can afford to pay lawyers and when big amounts are involved, their job is ensuring that isn't wasted. Generally, you get what you pay for and agree to. Small businesses and consumers indeed have no negotiation power to haggle a custom deal. You get what you pay for and when the amounts are low that doesn't typically include a lot of hand holding or personal attention. Consumers generally don't need source licenses. Just not a thing. People who need those aren't consumers but developers that generally either work for a company. What you buy as a consumer or company when purchasing software is a limited right to use the software. That's it. Nothing more nothing less. You buy whatever it says in the terms that you are buying. It's your decision to agree with that or not. Or indeed to bother informing yourself about that. But you do actually have power. You can vote with your feet and for example cancel subscriptions for services or buy software from competitors. Or use open source software. That keeps service providers a bit honest. I cancelled my Netflix account a few months ago. Their quality has dropped and they raised the prices on me. So thanks but no thanks. I might enable them for a few months in the future if/when they have something worth watching. I'm thinking of doing the same with Amazon Prime.

amiga386 3y ago
> You buy whatever it says in the terms that you are buying. It's your decision to agree with that or not. Or indeed to bother informing yourself about that. Caveat emptor and all that, but that's not quite true. Consumer rights laws (depending on what country you live in) tend to have more power than contracts of adhesion, and courts look down on these one-sided contracts with disdain. Whether you read the terms and conditions or not, if those terms are utter bullshit, it's unlikely they're enforcable. "This shoddy software deleted all my files! Oh, it says here they can delete all the files on my computer if I stop paying them, it's in the contract so I guess I have no comeback" - no, that's bullshit, that kind of term is unconscionable in clickwrap, go sue them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability > Examples of gross one-sidedness would be provisions that limit damages against the seller, or limit the rights of the purchaser to seek relief in the courts against the seller. In the 2009 case of Harris v. Blockbuster, Inc., the plaintiff argued that Blockbuster's provision to compel arbitration and forbid class action lawsuits was illusory and unconscionable. However, whether that contract was unconscionable is unknown, as the court ruled that it was illusory and therefore not enforceable, and disregarded all further consideration.