I think software subscriptions are a scam, but I don’t mind buying a perpetual license that is only good up to a certain version with additional fees for newer versions. It’s also fair to charge a recurring fee for something that has recurring hosting costs like a VPN, cloud storage, etc.
If they weren’t such dipshits, the “lifetime pass” should have been a perpetual license you can keep using as long as you want, but charge an optional fee for newer versions if you want to upgrade and get more features. They should also have offered a hosted service to make your instance available to others and charge a monthly fee for that. I think people would’ve been fine with all that.
I think part of the issue with moving from physical media as a form of software distribution is that people ship buggy software all the time. In addition to making more money via subscription, the company can ship updates whenever it wants. This often means that 1.x may have bugs still present in 1.z, but 1.z has features not originally included in 1.x. At a certain point you’re maintaining several versions of your product to test bug fixes, since 1.x users still deserve the bugs fixes but technically shouldn’t have the 1.z features. Better companies would be able to handle that, but nowadays bug fixes get extremely low priority since they’re spending a lot of dev time trying to attract and retain users with shiny new features, so that means active development on older versions for longer. Obviously the subscription revenue is also generally appealing.
My software for work operates this way. You buy a license, it just works. They add new features, and you pay to upgrade. They never add features that break it. It seems like a reasonable model.
I’ve always thought the licensing for Jetbrains IDEs is a pretty fair way of licensing software. If you stop subscribing you still get access to the last version of the software you paid for but you don’t get new versions anymore. And if you stay subscribed you get a loyalty discount after your first and second years. So it provides an incentive to stay subscribed long term but if you do leave you still get access perpetually to the last version you bought
I use a package at work that lets you update within the major version. So you won’t get the bells and whistles of the new one, but you’ll get security updates and big fixes for 2 years or so. After that, you’re using a mature and polished product that you can ride another 10 years if you want.
Well I don’t like seeing well reasoned, thoughtful comments in my hate thread. We are supposed to be kicking them while they’re down! Not pointing out how a small change would ameliorate the issue and fix everything!
I think software subscriptions are a scam, but I don’t mind buying a perpetual license that is only good up to a certain version with additional fees for newer versions. It’s also fair to charge a recurring fee for something that has recurring hosting costs like a VPN, cloud storage, etc.
If they weren’t such dipshits, the “lifetime pass” should have been a perpetual license you can keep using as long as you want, but charge an optional fee for newer versions if you want to upgrade and get more features. They should also have offered a hosted service to make your instance available to others and charge a monthly fee for that. I think people would’ve been fine with all that.
I think part of the issue with moving from physical media as a form of software distribution is that people ship buggy software all the time. In addition to making more money via subscription, the company can ship updates whenever it wants. This often means that 1.x may have bugs still present in 1.z, but 1.z has features not originally included in 1.x. At a certain point you’re maintaining several versions of your product to test bug fixes, since 1.x users still deserve the bugs fixes but technically shouldn’t have the 1.z features. Better companies would be able to handle that, but nowadays bug fixes get extremely low priority since they’re spending a lot of dev time trying to attract and retain users with shiny new features, so that means active development on older versions for longer. Obviously the subscription revenue is also generally appealing.
My software for work operates this way. You buy a license, it just works. They add new features, and you pay to upgrade. They never add features that break it. It seems like a reasonable model.
I’ve always thought the licensing for Jetbrains IDEs is a pretty fair way of licensing software. If you stop subscribing you still get access to the last version of the software you paid for but you don’t get new versions anymore. And if you stay subscribed you get a loyalty discount after your first and second years. So it provides an incentive to stay subscribed long term but if you do leave you still get access perpetually to the last version you bought
I think thats really fair too. I might adopt that for my startup.
I use a package at work that lets you update within the major version. So you won’t get the bells and whistles of the new one, but you’ll get security updates and big fixes for 2 years or so. After that, you’re using a mature and polished product that you can ride another 10 years if you want.
Well I don’t like seeing well reasoned, thoughtful comments in my hate thread. We are supposed to be kicking them while they’re down! Not pointing out how a small change would ameliorate the issue and fix everything!