7 ms·

The Software Paradox: The Rise and Fall of the Commercial Software Market [pdf]

128 points by rdudekul 11y ago

imrehg 11y ago
This is the original store page of the book: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033325.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033325.do Looks like the linked PDF is with the "Compliments of PayPal", Google Cache[1] still has that version of the O'Reilly store page while now actually cost money again. So I guess someone was clever to save the download link while the promotion lasted? :) [1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tTFeN8yjqSYJ:www.oreilly.com/programming/free/software-paradox.csp%3Fcmp%3Dtw-prog-books-videos-product-na_software-paradox.csp+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=tw http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tTFeN8y...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
hosh 11y ago
The tl;dr: 'The economic value of software is declining even as the strategic value of software is rising.' When I applied this framework to Docker, the magic sauce of Docker pops out in an obvious way. I had asserted in other threads that Docker's thing is packaging ... but reading this paper, I can see why Docker is moving so fast. And go figure, it's written by Stephen O'Grady of RedMonk.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Care to comment a bit further on exactly what you mean... I am interested. Why is Docker moving so fast?
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    I think Docker is selling (or riding) an ecosystem, not "just software". If they don't claim major mindshare, their could be replaced by a competitor. For example, see Bocker, "Docker implemented in 100 lines of bash": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9925896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9925896
- eternalban 11y ago
  > 'The economic value of software is declining even as the strategic value of software is rising.' Sometimes as a geek I feel a certain sympathy for 3rd world nations who happen to sit on a scare natural resource and are forced to give it away for a song when asked by merchants in military gear..
  - x5n1 11y ago
    Nobody is forcing you to do this shit. You do it of your own free will because Mr. MBA has got a bunch of Indians working for him for a song.
    - eternalban 11y ago
      I've sat in meetings where decision to dismiss an entire floor of programmers in one of the nyc building of one bank included open and frank assessment of outsourced work ("4th iteration" "crap" ...) by one of the executives. ("Mr. MBA" is just another worker, like you and me.)
      - GnarfGnarf 11y ago
        I'm confused: is the executive dismissing outsourced work as crap, or is he advocating outsourcing because the entire floor of NYC programmers' work is crap? Did they make the decision to outsource the work?
        eternalban 11y ago
        He noted that it was crap, but then again the meeting was about bringing in /more/ so the floor could be cleaned up. I'm sure this equation resolves at a higher interest level, but it did not make much sense at that table.
  - jgmmo 11y ago
    Have you ever been to India? Do you know what they would be doing to survive if they couldn't program for U.S. businesses from across the globe? I saw people in India eating trash. I've been there. I have seen the other jobs in the area. Not everyone was dirt poor, but there were many. Meanwhile, there were also affluent people, with drivers and servants. Trust me, the people who work to become programmers in India are among the middle to upper class.
amelius 11y ago
From the description on the O'Reilly page I get the impression that this book is perhaps 90% hindsight and 10% helpful advice for entrepreneurs in software. Is this a correct observation?
- jacquesm 11y ago
  There are lots of good lessons in history as well. Remember that trends in computing tend to be cyclic (for instance: centralization/decentralization).
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    Cycles are an attractive framework for thinking about technology progress, but is it true? For example, the app->Web->app apparent "cycle" happened exactly once. And there is a government jackboot on the neck of decentralization. I don't see repetition or commonality. All such supposed cycles happen on the backdrop of huge growth rates.
    - carterehsmith 11y ago
      first computers -> timesharing, multiuser (dumb terminal) -> client-server (smart terminal) -> Web 1.0 (dumb terminal) -> Web 2.0+ (smart terminal) -> cloud (dumb terminal)
- tim333 11y ago
  The 'What to do?' chapter is 12 pages out of 63 so I'd estimate nearer 20%. Suggestions include doing other stuff related to the software such as hiring taxis (Uber) or selling shiny hardware (Apple, Nest).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Rafert 11y ago
Changing the file extension to epub or mobi works as well, btw.
- tim333 11y ago
  I tried mobi and it didn't open for me.
- chkuendig 11y ago
  http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-paradox.mobi http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-parad... http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-paradox.epub http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-parad... thanks :)
nickpsecurity 11y ago
The title is a half-truth: commercial software is certainly in the decline while also being a huge, profitable business. The SaaS and ad-driven vendors get most of the attention. They might even be most of the startups. Yet, there's a steady stream of companies building software that's worth paying for and making money on it. On top of that, there's always the "improve legacy systems" market where you makes something they can't get away from even better. Solutions building on Microsoft, Oracle, mainframe, AS/400, VMS, and so on all come to mind. They stay around, so your enhancement might stay around too. The two ensure commercial software won't go away or even be marginal in terms of where the profit is. SaaS is a race-to-the-bottom due to intense competitiveness. Ad-driven model can be lucrative but is also high risk. Building a product with strong lock-in effects is the only method proven to last decades. From there, you can decide whether you want the risk of the ad model (Facebook) or the profit of commercial model (Microsoft, Oracle). One looks more appealing. ;)
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  I'm not sure those big vendors will stay around, to me Oracle looks particularly vulnerable. They may have a lot of "locked in" customers now but all they can hope for from that strategy is a long and eventually terminal decline.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    The problems facing the biggest vendors have to do with lack of innovation and adaption. For example, Oracle could've been investing in and acquiring all kinds of clever DB technology to integrate within their own stacks. They did little in that space. Now those companies are eating their potential market-share.
    - Spearchucker 11y ago
      First Oracle acquired Peoplesoft. They could've changed their name or Orasoft. Then they acquired Siebel, and should've changed their name or Orabel. Jokes aside, Oracle has been on a huge acquisition spree for many years. Fusion (based on the Weblogic acqusition) was supposed to integrate all the other acquisitions, as well as partner products. It was over-hyped, and took years to fully materialize. And then Oracle missed the cloud boat, and has been playing catch-up ever since. Probably most importantly is their sales strategy. As a potential Oracle customer all you had to do was mention Microsoft, and Oracle products would get heavily discounted. And then the customer would get stung for extortionate consulting fees and license renewal costs. They used to be a quality name in the industry, but have slowly and very steadily eroded that reputation.
kyaghmour 11y ago
Not sure that there's any paradox here. The rise of a freely-accessible network connecting all humans (i.e. the Internet) has just made it such that hundreds of years of cleverly and carefully assembled middle-middlemen that were required to keep the economy going are no longer required. This affects the software ecosystem that existed right before the Internet but impacts everything else as well: taxis, hotels, etc. Moving forward, assume that middle-men are gone, unless required by legislation or differences in sovereignty (i.e. still effectively legislation). The net result is that it's cheap to build and procure yourself practically almost anything, with the surface of things you can't build/procure yourself increasingly diminishing given the network effect of large swaths of the human race rushing to the Internet to build ever increasingly sophisticated modular components with each trying to outflank each other with a lower price/barrier-to-entry. If we can 3D print/carve materials we can buy in bulk in a cheap fashion from freely-available software/data, we are likely looking at a fundamentally different economy than the one we are in today.
- cronjobber 11y ago
  > assume that middle-men are gone Wishful thinking. In the real world, middle man competition is being replaced with middle man monopolies, e.g. Amazon between manufacturers and consumers, Apple/Google between app creators and users, Google between websites and readers, Uber between cabbies and travelers.
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    Interesting concept There's a word for single seller (monopoly), single buyer (monopsony) but not for single middle man (at least not that I'm aware of)
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      Publisher? ;)
    - cpeterso 11y ago
      Is a middle man not a seller, of sorts?
curiousjorge 11y ago
It's true that free software is eating into everyone's margins, especially unsustainable business models that run entirely by burning cash and continually raising more and more money in hopes a giant will come and swoop it off it's feet. However, I think there's a problem with attempting to take the assumptions from macro view and drilling it to individual companies and startups. Plenty of awful software with awful websites sell like hot cakes. The age of these companies are ancient, started in mid 90s to mostly early 2000s. The people buying their software don't know what open source is, rather if they see something as free, these are the type of people that think there's something wrong with it. By the articles explanation, they shouldn't exist or they should be fending off attacks from left and right but in reality, the software part of business is actually very small. The fact is, it's a business and the people that make up the customer base. So while it is true that some industries may face fierce competition from "free software" it varies from a spectrum where one end is little to no innovative destruction mostly because of the customers to the other end which this article talks mostly about where ALL software companies are threat. There are still industries where the establishment form coalition and invent complicated "industry standards" to prevent anymore innovation happening. These are business strategies aimed to raise the cost of entry among other tactics that's harmful for the industry but great for the stakeholders. Having said that, the article isn't without merits, there are some very important truths in there. Like almost all advices, take it with a grain of salt.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  WinRAR was a good example. There were free utilities to compress files. Yet, theirs had better interface, features, and performance. The file splitting feature was particularly compelling when dialup, floppies, and CD-R's were common. So, people kept buying them. They've declined quite a bit and we have excellent alternatives such as 7-Zip today. Yet, the product is still selling because they do a job well for a reasonable price.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    That's the thing about reading articles like these, they are massive generalizations that apply to big league players. There are still plenty of opportunities to be had for many other players.
amelius 11y ago
It certainly looks like there is no money to be made anymore in compilers, or software development tools in general. That market seems to have been eaten by free open source software. I wonder if there is any advice for software tool builders? Has the money really dried up?
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  There's several private companies that make money selling compilers: Green Hills and PGI comes to mind immediately. Open compilers are good enough that commercial ones have to be better in general or on specific platforms to justify price. Plus, they usually integrate into other tools that do things FOSS cant or doesnt do well. One area that's an untapped market is compilers that automatically and efficiently protect legacy code. I've seen academic and FOSS methods that do well. A thoroughly tested, supported, integrated with IDE option would probably sell well. A cross-platform even better.
- hyperpallium 11y ago
  That's the trend, eg Borland. But Jetbrains is making money. There's also a bunch of static analysis tool vendors. We can model open source as cheap copycat inports: you can't make money at the low end, but must go up market. You have to keep improving to stay ahead of the tide, but eventually there's no up market left and you are sunk. So you have to jump across to the next island.
rando289 11y ago
It's really twisting things in order to fit a wierd corporate narrative on FOSS. "Even companies like GE are helping to fund noncommercial software, having con- tributed $105 million to Pivotal, the home of projects like Cloud Foundry." Uh... they invested for a 10% stake in a for profit company which creates commercially focused free software, among other things. The corporate doublespeak runs deep. Reminds me generally of orielly's screwy agenda http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Yeah, that is deceptive. Facebook is a great example of a company funding FOSS. Redhat is the canonical example. EnterpriseDB is another example. The defining characteristic is the difference between what they're taking from a project and what they're contributing. Most companies prefer a 95-100% one-way relationship in their favor.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
Commercial software may be getting a smaller piece of the pie, the pie is getting larger quickly. I basically agree with Donald Knuth: open source (I would prefer it be libre) software will continue to be more important with passing decades. I expect that if the human species survives long term that in a few hundred years the world(s) will be run at partially by very old and very stable open source software. I have had access to computers since about 1960 (thanks Dad!) and the improvements have been exponential. That said, in the distant future when computer science is a mature science, for many tasks rock solid software will likely be more important than the decade's latest bells and whistles.
antaviana 11y ago
We launched in December 2012 our offline desktop software product for business and freelancers (niche market with a TAM of about 100,000 users) only as a subscription, no perpetual licenses available. Previously this project was freeware (closed source) so our 2.x version remained freeware and our 3.0 was only available as a subscription sold in chunks of 1 year-subscriptions as opposed to monthly). In retrospect, we are very happy to have chosen the subscription model because it resembles a lot the freeware model: for maintenance you just focus on the latest version/build issues because 100% of your customer base is entitled to have it, you don't compete with yourself across paid versions and don't need marketing effort to explain customers why they should upgrade every year. Your sales effort is also lower because your price point is lower.

128 points by rdudekul 11y ago

This is the original store page of the book: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033325.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033325.do Looks like the linked PDF is with the "Compliments of PayPal", Google Cache[1] still has that version of the O'Reilly store page while now actually cost money again. So I guess someone was clever to save the download link while the promotion lasted? :) [1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tTFeN8yjqSYJ:www.oreilly.com/programming/free/software-paradox.csp%3Fcmp%3Dtw-prog-books-videos-product-na_software-paradox.csp+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=tw http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tTFeN8y...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

hosh 11y ago

The tl;dr: 'The economic value of software is declining even as the strategic value of software is rising.' When I applied this framework to Docker, the magic sauce of Docker pops out in an obvious way. I had asserted in other threads that Docker's thing is packaging ... but reading this paper, I can see why Docker is moving so fast. And go figure, it's written by Stephen O'Grady of RedMonk.

x5n1 11y ago
Care to comment a bit further on exactly what you mean... I am interested. Why is Docker moving so fast?
- cpeterso 11y ago
  I think Docker is selling (or riding) an ecosystem, not "just software". If they don't claim major mindshare, their could be replaced by a competitor. For example, see Bocker, "Docker implemented in 100 lines of bash": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9925896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9925896
eternalban 11y ago
> 'The economic value of software is declining even as the strategic value of software is rising.' Sometimes as a geek I feel a certain sympathy for 3rd world nations who happen to sit on a scare natural resource and are forced to give it away for a song when asked by merchants in military gear..
- x5n1 11y ago
  Nobody is forcing you to do this shit. You do it of your own free will because Mr. MBA has got a bunch of Indians working for him for a song.
  - eternalban 11y ago
    I've sat in meetings where decision to dismiss an entire floor of programmers in one of the nyc building of one bank included open and frank assessment of outsourced work ("4th iteration" "crap" ...) by one of the executives. ("Mr. MBA" is just another worker, like you and me.)
    - GnarfGnarf 11y ago
      I'm confused: is the executive dismissing outsourced work as crap, or is he advocating outsourcing because the entire floor of NYC programmers' work is crap? Did they make the decision to outsource the work?
      - eternalban 11y ago
        He noted that it was crap, but then again the meeting was about bringing in /more/ so the floor could be cleaned up. I'm sure this equation resolves at a higher interest level, but it did not make much sense at that table.
- jgmmo 11y ago
  Have you ever been to India? Do you know what they would be doing to survive if they couldn't program for U.S. businesses from across the globe? I saw people in India eating trash. I've been there. I have seen the other jobs in the area. Not everyone was dirt poor, but there were many. Meanwhile, there were also affluent people, with drivers and servants. Trust me, the people who work to become programmers in India are among the middle to upper class.

amelius 11y ago

From the description on the O'Reilly page I get the impression that this book is perhaps 90% hindsight and 10% helpful advice for entrepreneurs in software. Is this a correct observation?

jacquesm 11y ago
There are lots of good lessons in history as well. Remember that trends in computing tend to be cyclic (for instance: centralization/decentralization).
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Cycles are an attractive framework for thinking about technology progress, but is it true? For example, the app->Web->app apparent "cycle" happened exactly once. And there is a government jackboot on the neck of decentralization. I don't see repetition or commonality. All such supposed cycles happen on the backdrop of huge growth rates.
  - carterehsmith 11y ago
    first computers -> timesharing, multiuser (dumb terminal) -> client-server (smart terminal) -> Web 1.0 (dumb terminal) -> Web 2.0+ (smart terminal) -> cloud (dumb terminal)
tim333 11y ago
The 'What to do?' chapter is 12 pages out of 63 so I'd estimate nearer 20%. Suggestions include doing other stuff related to the software such as hiring taxis (Uber) or selling shiny hardware (Apple, Nest).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Rafert 11y ago

Changing the file extension to epub or mobi works as well, btw.

tim333 11y ago
I tried mobi and it didn't open for me.
chkuendig 11y ago
http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-paradox.mobi http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-parad... http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-paradox.epub http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-parad... thanks :)

nickpsecurity 11y ago

The title is a half-truth: commercial software is certainly in the decline while also being a huge, profitable business. The SaaS and ad-driven vendors get most of the attention. They might even be most of the startups. Yet, there's a steady stream of companies building software that's worth paying for and making money on it. On top of that, there's always the "improve legacy systems" market where you makes something they can't get away from even better. Solutions building on Microsoft, Oracle, mainframe, AS/400, VMS, and so on all come to mind. They stay around, so your enhancement might stay around too. The two ensure commercial software won't go away or even be marginal in terms of where the profit is. SaaS is a race-to-the-bottom due to intense competitiveness. Ad-driven model can be lucrative but is also high risk. Building a product with strong lock-in effects is the only method proven to last decades. From there, you can decide whether you want the risk of the ad model (Facebook) or the profit of commercial model (Microsoft, Oracle). One looks more appealing. ;)

tonyedgecombe 11y ago
I'm not sure those big vendors will stay around, to me Oracle looks particularly vulnerable. They may have a lot of "locked in" customers now but all they can hope for from that strategy is a long and eventually terminal decline.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  The problems facing the biggest vendors have to do with lack of innovation and adaption. For example, Oracle could've been investing in and acquiring all kinds of clever DB technology to integrate within their own stacks. They did little in that space. Now those companies are eating their potential market-share.
  - Spearchucker 11y ago
    First Oracle acquired Peoplesoft. They could've changed their name or Orasoft. Then they acquired Siebel, and should've changed their name or Orabel. Jokes aside, Oracle has been on a huge acquisition spree for many years. Fusion (based on the Weblogic acqusition) was supposed to integrate all the other acquisitions, as well as partner products. It was over-hyped, and took years to fully materialize. And then Oracle missed the cloud boat, and has been playing catch-up ever since. Probably most importantly is their sales strategy. As a potential Oracle customer all you had to do was mention Microsoft, and Oracle products would get heavily discounted. And then the customer would get stung for extortionate consulting fees and license renewal costs. They used to be a quality name in the industry, but have slowly and very steadily eroded that reputation.

kyaghmour 11y ago

Not sure that there's any paradox here. The rise of a freely-accessible network connecting all humans (i.e. the Internet) has just made it such that hundreds of years of cleverly and carefully assembled middle-middlemen that were required to keep the economy going are no longer required. This affects the software ecosystem that existed right before the Internet but impacts everything else as well: taxis, hotels, etc. Moving forward, assume that middle-men are gone, unless required by legislation or differences in sovereignty (i.e. still effectively legislation). The net result is that it's cheap to build and procure yourself practically almost anything, with the surface of things you can't build/procure yourself increasingly diminishing given the network effect of large swaths of the human race rushing to the Internet to build ever increasingly sophisticated modular components with each trying to outflank each other with a lower price/barrier-to-entry. If we can 3D print/carve materials we can buy in bulk in a cheap fashion from freely-available software/data, we are likely looking at a fundamentally different economy than the one we are in today.

cronjobber 11y ago
> assume that middle-men are gone Wishful thinking. In the real world, middle man competition is being replaced with middle man monopolies, e.g. Amazon between manufacturers and consumers, Apple/Google between app creators and users, Google between websites and readers, Uber between cabbies and travelers.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Interesting concept There's a word for single seller (monopoly), single buyer (monopsony) but not for single middle man (at least not that I'm aware of)
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Publisher? ;)
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    Is a middle man not a seller, of sorts?

curiousjorge 11y ago

It's true that free software is eating into everyone's margins, especially unsustainable business models that run entirely by burning cash and continually raising more and more money in hopes a giant will come and swoop it off it's feet. However, I think there's a problem with attempting to take the assumptions from macro view and drilling it to individual companies and startups. Plenty of awful software with awful websites sell like hot cakes. The age of these companies are ancient, started in mid 90s to mostly early 2000s. The people buying their software don't know what open source is, rather if they see something as free, these are the type of people that think there's something wrong with it. By the articles explanation, they shouldn't exist or they should be fending off attacks from left and right but in reality, the software part of business is actually very small. The fact is, it's a business and the people that make up the customer base. So while it is true that some industries may face fierce competition from "free software" it varies from a spectrum where one end is little to no innovative destruction mostly because of the customers to the other end which this article talks mostly about where ALL software companies are threat. There are still industries where the establishment form coalition and invent complicated "industry standards" to prevent anymore innovation happening. These are business strategies aimed to raise the cost of entry among other tactics that's harmful for the industry but great for the stakeholders. Having said that, the article isn't without merits, there are some very important truths in there. Like almost all advices, take it with a grain of salt.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
WinRAR was a good example. There were free utilities to compress files. Yet, theirs had better interface, features, and performance. The file splitting feature was particularly compelling when dialup, floppies, and CD-R's were common. So, people kept buying them. They've declined quite a bit and we have excellent alternatives such as 7-Zip today. Yet, the product is still selling because they do a job well for a reasonable price.
- x5n1 11y ago
  That's the thing about reading articles like these, they are massive generalizations that apply to big league players. There are still plenty of opportunities to be had for many other players.

amelius 11y ago

It certainly looks like there is no money to be made anymore in compilers, or software development tools in general. That market seems to have been eaten by free open source software. I wonder if there is any advice for software tool builders? Has the money really dried up?

nickpsecurity 11y ago
There's several private companies that make money selling compilers: Green Hills and PGI comes to mind immediately. Open compilers are good enough that commercial ones have to be better in general or on specific platforms to justify price. Plus, they usually integrate into other tools that do things FOSS cant or doesnt do well. One area that's an untapped market is compilers that automatically and efficiently protect legacy code. I've seen academic and FOSS methods that do well. A thoroughly tested, supported, integrated with IDE option would probably sell well. A cross-platform even better.
hyperpallium 11y ago
That's the trend, eg Borland. But Jetbrains is making money. There's also a bunch of static analysis tool vendors. We can model open source as cheap copycat inports: you can't make money at the low end, but must go up market. You have to keep improving to stay ahead of the tide, but eventually there's no up market left and you are sunk. So you have to jump across to the next island.

rando289 11y ago

It's really twisting things in order to fit a wierd corporate narrative on FOSS. "Even companies like GE are helping to fund noncommercial software, having con- tributed $105 million to Pivotal, the home of projects like Cloud Foundry." Uh... they invested for a 10% stake in a for profit company which creates commercially focused free software, among other things. The corporate doublespeak runs deep. Reminds me generally of orielly's screwy agenda http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Yeah, that is deceptive. Facebook is a great example of a company funding FOSS. Redhat is the canonical example. EnterpriseDB is another example. The defining characteristic is the difference between what they're taking from a project and what they're contributing. Most companies prefer a 95-100% one-way relationship in their favor.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

Commercial software may be getting a smaller piece of the pie, the pie is getting larger quickly. I basically agree with Donald Knuth: open source (I would prefer it be libre) software will continue to be more important with passing decades. I expect that if the human species survives long term that in a few hundred years the world(s) will be run at partially by very old and very stable open source software. I have had access to computers since about 1960 (thanks Dad!) and the improvements have been exponential. That said, in the distant future when computer science is a mature science, for many tasks rock solid software will likely be more important than the decade's latest bells and whistles.

antaviana 11y ago

We launched in December 2012 our offline desktop software product for business and freelancers (niche market with a TAM of about 100,000 users) only as a subscription, no perpetual licenses available. Previously this project was freeware (closed source) so our 2.x version remained freeware and our 3.0 was only available as a subscription sold in chunks of 1 year-subscriptions as opposed to monthly). In retrospect, we are very happy to have chosen the subscription model because it resembles a lot the freeware model: for maintenance you just focus on the latest version/build issues because 100% of your customer base is entitled to have it, you don't compete with yourself across paid versions and don't need marketing effort to explain customers why they should upgrade every year. Your sales effort is also lower because your price point is lower.