3 ms·

If I get ongoing value from my fully paid off car, should I keep paying the OEM? How about my house or my bike or my shoes? My toilet (huge ROI on this one)? My

If I get ongoing value from my fully paid off car, should I keep paying the OEM? How about my house or my bike or my shoes? My toilet (huge ROI on this one)? My fridge?? Why do we feel that software gets to impose this ridiculous SaaS model? The only real answer is "because they can", not because it's helping anyone. Reality is that many modern software developments have plenty in common with designing a toilet. You spend time identifying the problem statement, how you can differentiate yourself, prototype it, work out the bugs, ship the final product, and let sales teams move the product. The difference is the toilet can't be turned into a SaaS (yet) and, if it ever could, that would break functionality because you're supposed to poop in it, not have it poop on you.

ryandrake 9mo ago
Seriously, I have a house full of appliances, tools, clothing, and so on, that I get "ongoing value" from and whose manufacturers don't have the gall to try to charge me monthly for. Totally unacceptable business model.
- lazide 9mo ago
  As long as no one expects updates and ongoing support beyond some pre-agreed time. The issue is a mismatch of incentives - customers wanting things for free - even if they aren’t actually customers. Vs businesses need/want for ongoing revenue (ideally for free too!). Both sides are never going to be perfectly happy, but there are reasonable compromises. There are also extractive abusive psychos, of course.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    There was a comment here recently — someone complained that SoundCloud doesn't treat "former paying customers" well. This complainant was a "former paying customer". Free customers can store 3 hours of sound. This former paying customer had more than 3 hours of sound stored. The comment said SoundCloud was a terrible company holding their data hostage, by not letting them do anything with it except delete things to get it under 3 hours, and threatening to delete all of it if they didn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783575
- alkonaut 9mo ago
  If you were given the choice of buying a fridge for $0 and paying $10/mo for using it, or paying $1k and $0/mo those are both entirely valid pricing models. If you are a homeowner you probably don't want the hassle of managing subscriptions but if you are starting a business where you need fridges but don't have a lot of capital it might be worth looking into. It's basically just financing + service etc.
charcircuit 9mo ago
I think it would be fair to keep paying for a car, house, bike, shoes, toilet, and fridge. If I'm still using such great products, why not reward the creators of them. But as a consumer I am also price conscious so if a competitor can offer an equivalent product for cheaper I will go with them.
- chongli 9mo ago
  There are arrangements where you continue to pay for cars and houses without owning them. They're called leases and rental agreements. They typically cost a lot less for the consumer than outright purchases and at the conclusion of the lease/rental term the consumer is free to return the car/house to its owner without compensation for depreciation or wear & tear (though car leases usually impose mileage restrictions and routine maintenance requirements).
  - charcircuit 9mo ago
    Rental cars and houses do exist, but you could still have fully owned cars and houses whose doors lock without paying a subscription. It doesn't have to be the full thing either. Certain tiers could disable only air conditioning for example.
    - My_Name 9mo ago
      This is happening right now with cars. Regular payments or some features on the car you bought outright stop working. Mercedes restricts the performance of some cars if you don't pay $1200 a year for the “Acceleration Increase”. You have to pay more if you want to use the power you already paid for. BMW offer heated seats for £10 a month. The car has heated seats that work fine, and you paid for the hardware already, but they are turned off if you don't pay more. Neither of these are anything to do with ongoing costs to the company, like support or mobile connection, they just want ongoing revenue.
    - chongli 9mo ago
      Rental cars and houses do exist, but you could still have fully owned cars and houses whose doors lock without paying a subscription. For cars maybe, but not for houses. Property law for land is very old and very well established. If someone else is able to lock you out of your house then they are the title owner, not you. If you are the title owner then you’re well within your rights to have a locksmith replace the lock on the door.
4nonverbal-alit 9mo ago
I am not sure if the replies are serious or sarcastic
hulitu 9mo ago
> work out the bugs, ship the final product This part is left out in modern software development. Bugs ? What bugs ? We just (re)wrote a new version. This one should be better.
MiddleEndian 9mo ago
The funny thing is SAAS frequently provides less value because of automatic updates. If your toilet could change its shape at a moment's notice because of some study on a sample of people who are entirely unlike you or even just because some random PM wanted a promotion, and you could not stop it from doing so, it would be incredibly obvious how bad that was. Yet many people in the software field try to convince users that mandatory automatic updates on their devices are a good thing.
- zhengyi13 9mo ago
  ... If there were an ever-evolving landscape of awful things crawling up out of my sewer through my toilet, I would very much want to pay for automated toilet updates to prevent the most recent awful crawling horror from appearing in my bathroom.
  - MiddleEndian 9mo ago
    If the people who produced toilets ACTUALLY cared about stopping the ever-evolving landscape of awful things, they could: A. Release security updates independently from feature updates B. Stop adding random features that hook you up to more unwanted landscapes, or landscapes at all (software that could run entirely locally without network access but have network access anyway, updates that force ads, the updater itself, etc.) but they don't because that's not the actual reason they have automatic updates.

ryandrake 9mo ago

Seriously, I have a house full of appliances, tools, clothing, and so on, that I get "ongoing value" from and whose manufacturers don't have the gall to try to charge me monthly for. Totally unacceptable business model.

lazide 9mo ago
As long as no one expects updates and ongoing support beyond some pre-agreed time. The issue is a mismatch of incentives - customers wanting things for free - even if they aren’t actually customers. Vs businesses need/want for ongoing revenue (ideally for free too!). Both sides are never going to be perfectly happy, but there are reasonable compromises. There are also extractive abusive psychos, of course.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  There was a comment here recently — someone complained that SoundCloud doesn't treat "former paying customers" well. This complainant was a "former paying customer". Free customers can store 3 hours of sound. This former paying customer had more than 3 hours of sound stored. The comment said SoundCloud was a terrible company holding their data hostage, by not letting them do anything with it except delete things to get it under 3 hours, and threatening to delete all of it if they didn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783575
alkonaut 9mo ago
If you were given the choice of buying a fridge for $0 and paying $10/mo for using it, or paying $1k and $0/mo those are both entirely valid pricing models. If you are a homeowner you probably don't want the hassle of managing subscriptions but if you are starting a business where you need fridges but don't have a lot of capital it might be worth looking into. It's basically just financing + service etc.

charcircuit 9mo ago

I think it would be fair to keep paying for a car, house, bike, shoes, toilet, and fridge. If I'm still using such great products, why not reward the creators of them. But as a consumer I am also price conscious so if a competitor can offer an equivalent product for cheaper I will go with them.

chongli 9mo ago
There are arrangements where you continue to pay for cars and houses without owning them. They're called leases and rental agreements. They typically cost a lot less for the consumer than outright purchases and at the conclusion of the lease/rental term the consumer is free to return the car/house to its owner without compensation for depreciation or wear & tear (though car leases usually impose mileage restrictions and routine maintenance requirements).
- charcircuit 9mo ago
  Rental cars and houses do exist, but you could still have fully owned cars and houses whose doors lock without paying a subscription. It doesn't have to be the full thing either. Certain tiers could disable only air conditioning for example.
  - My_Name 9mo ago
    This is happening right now with cars. Regular payments or some features on the car you bought outright stop working. Mercedes restricts the performance of some cars if you don't pay $1200 a year for the “Acceleration Increase”. You have to pay more if you want to use the power you already paid for. BMW offer heated seats for £10 a month. The car has heated seats that work fine, and you paid for the hardware already, but they are turned off if you don't pay more. Neither of these are anything to do with ongoing costs to the company, like support or mobile connection, they just want ongoing revenue.
  - chongli 9mo ago
    Rental cars and houses do exist, but you could still have fully owned cars and houses whose doors lock without paying a subscription. For cars maybe, but not for houses. Property law for land is very old and very well established. If someone else is able to lock you out of your house then they are the title owner, not you. If you are the title owner then you’re well within your rights to have a locksmith replace the lock on the door.

4nonverbal-alit 9mo ago

I am not sure if the replies are serious or sarcastic

hulitu 9mo ago

> work out the bugs, ship the final product This part is left out in modern software development. Bugs ? What bugs ? We just (re)wrote a new version. This one should be better.

MiddleEndian 9mo ago

The funny thing is SAAS frequently provides less value because of automatic updates. If your toilet could change its shape at a moment's notice because of some study on a sample of people who are entirely unlike you or even just because some random PM wanted a promotion, and you could not stop it from doing so, it would be incredibly obvious how bad that was. Yet many people in the software field try to convince users that mandatory automatic updates on their devices are a good thing.

zhengyi13 9mo ago
... If there were an ever-evolving landscape of awful things crawling up out of my sewer through my toilet, I would very much want to pay for automated toilet updates to prevent the most recent awful crawling horror from appearing in my bathroom.
- MiddleEndian 9mo ago
  If the people who produced toilets ACTUALLY cared about stopping the ever-evolving landscape of awful things, they could: A. Release security updates independently from feature updates B. Stop adding random features that hook you up to more unwanted landscapes, or landscapes at all (software that could run entirely locally without network access but have network access anyway, updates that force ads, the updater itself, etc.) but they don't because that's not the actual reason they have automatic updates.