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It is, indeed, a problem. Software is maturing (has Office improved much in a decade?) and, assuming software engineers continue to wish to eat, they will go w
by carsongross 14y ago
It is, indeed, a problem. Software is maturing (has Office improved much in a decade?) and, assuming software engineers continue to wish to eat, they will go where the money is, which is in recurring revenue products like Basecamp.
I think the same thing will happen/is happening in mobile, but it's being masked to some extent by the fact that there is so much greenfield still available there.
It's a tricky problem, but it's one that entrepreneurs and developers increasingly can't afford to ignore.
- macspoofing 14y agoHold on a second. We've never had the notion of buy once, free upgrades forever. What developers did was version their software. You get minor updates but pay again for major releases. It isn't a bad model. It still largely works.
- carsongross 14y agoAnd this is where we disagree: I think software is becoming a more mature industry, and the upgrade-train model we've had for the last few decades is coming to an end. I might be wrong.
- Steko 14y agoI think it's more like an acknowledgement that some software markets are inherently very limited. Consumer email software is in a place similar to where manufacturing pagers were when texting blew up. Sure some people still needed pagers and the newer pagers were the best ones ever but that doesn't matter when basically no one needed pagers any more. Meanwhile the market for non-recurring software seems as large as it's ever been. Sure you sell for $1-$10 instead of $200 but you sell to an audience thousands of times larger.