My favourite licensing models for self-hosted software are perpetual fallback licenses. Jetbrains does this well and their description of it is:
A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific version of software without an active subscription for it. The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included.
My gripe with the JetBrains license change is that the perpetual license is for a version that's already 12 months old when they have an aggressive release schedule that put's your perpetual license as a _large_ step backwards.
I say this as a personal subscriber to the JetBrains Toolbox. I'm unhappy about the mechanics of the fallback license, but I also find utility in paying the subscription for right now (really the last few years).
I would rather have them offer a full purchase option, with, say, 10 years of upgrades included. I could pay 750 EUR for it once, and be set for the rest of my career, basically, instead of having to deal with purchases every year.
This is great until a company starts making file formats completely incompatible with back versions, making it impossible to use with friends or anyone else. Oh or when they just change the plan to subscription only anyways.
I KNEW you were talking about Sketch from the moment I read your first sentence. I have a hypothesis that Figma never would've become so big had they not screwed up so badly with their licensing and lack of seamless collaboration features.
This happened with me for Evernote. Incredibly frustrating. I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised with how well the latest versions of Microsoft Office still support most non x formats (eg .doc, .xls).
This is what Binary Ninja (Reverse Eng. tool) does, and why its a community favorite. https://binary.ninja/faq/#subscription. However it seems they don't keep download links public, but my old license/dl link from my email still seems to work.
My problem with Jetbrains' software is that it comes with DRM so, sure, i can buy their thing once but i'm still reliant on them regardless. It isn't like i can pay them once and forget about their existence afterwards.
Even better is the licensing model where you can keep using the version as-is after the subscription ends. You just don't get any new features. It's even possible to do on iOS, as Working Copy [0] is doing it. (You also get all the bug fixes and stuff, only new features are behind a flag that requires you to purchase another year of updates. I would also argue that Working Copy specifically is too cheap, but I guess it's working for them.)
I wonder if they're going to offer Basecamp with this model, and if so, how much is that going to cost? I imagine it would have to be in the thousands.
Well, purpose of Tada list was to act as a funnel to Basecamp: they took part of the functionality and when you needed more you check the Basecamp. I think they are going to with this strategy again: limited subset of Basecamp and when you need, say, mobile app or more features you know where to go.
is the imagine including the hosting? I could see that, and even higher if storage space got into the terabytes.
I myself could see 3-$500 and self host on my own hardware / vps - with options to pay for future upgrades that include new features if wanted.
I like basecamp, and would consider buying in that way, but there is more and more competition in the space that makes others attractive, and with the speed of changes with the others paying 24 months of service in advance doesn't make as much sense at it would in a smaller space. For me anyway.
Pretty vague announcement, I find it hard to believe 37 signals will stray too far from the SaaS cash cow they arguably helped to create with basecamp..
It's exactly that. Jason and DHH have built their entire personal brands on contrarianism. It works for them, but at a certain point it feels inauthentic.
It's 100% not authentic. I have worked directly with one of the two you mentioned and it was an awful experience. The way they treated people around them (both people they knew personally and people at the company I worked with them at) was awful. Based on my experience with them I have never used another 37 signals product.
We helped pioneer keeping you on the hook perpetually for a solution! Now we've extracted maximum value out of that we're going to offer an ever wilder idea! One big fat payment for the same thing you've spent years paying and subscribing to.
Just one last attempt to extract every cent of good will out of a consumer before they truly cotton on.
At least, that's my sour angle of it. As much as I want this 'model' again.
It's true that for library maintainers that TypeScript has been somewhat annoying, where many are now moving back to JS with JSDoc based types, but I'm not sure why one would replace application level code with pure JS. Basecamp likely already use Rails for the logic so I guess they don't need that much typing on the frontend.
But yes, generally DHH seems too absolutist in his takes.
Additionally, I'd wager a good majority of their paying customers had no idea the controversy was happening, or weren't going to change their entire office operating procedures because the owners may have some caustic opinions.
Yes, that's the other thing. (Corporate) customers almost universally do not care about internal company drama unless it materially affects them (such as with the recent Hashicorp license changes). Even end consumers don't much care, otherwise Nestlé would not continue to be as successful as it is. There is only so much energy that people can expend daily to care about something, and usually other people's drama is not it.
Haven't Teams and Slack eaten their market in the intervening time? Even Discord and Matrix are moving into the space. If they're still profitable, it's because they're extracting more money from a shrinking pool of customers. I guess Oracle has shown that can last a while with many of their products, but I'm not sure that's the kind of influence they once had.
Sounds good, but I mean, it's just pros and cons with the SaaS model, or with the pay-once...
Before SaaS there used to be a massive pool of native apps, doing all kinds of different things... You indeed paid your license and lived with the product until the next major version, but there was little chance to just use something for a month or two, so the prices were higher.
With SaaS you do end up renting stuff all over the place, and never owning anything, but the prices are more affordable... Think about an AutoCAD license, that shit is privative for a hobbyist... With SaaS you can in fact afford something to begin with.
This doesn’t address a major gripe with the subscription model - taking away the option to purchase software outright. Were both to exist, we would not be having this discussion.
In reality, corporations are driven by greed and greed pushed the subscription model. For some situations, subscriptions work well - music is one. For others, it is terrible. CAD software is a great example especially at larger orgs. Why should software be a recurring cost in the name of development and support?
I agree with the majority of what you wrote, but I'm utterly confused by this statement
> For some situations, subscriptions work well - music is one.
I've only ever purchased albums. Why in the world would I pay a monthly fee for something I presumably want to listen for for the rest of my life? 10-15$ for a one time purchase is far preferable to a monthly fee of nearly the same. I'm also weary of the idea of the services that have the right to stream music from labels X, Y, and Z suddenly pulling out, cutting off my access to the albums from artists I want to listen to at any given time.
I hope none of that comes off sounding "snobby" or whatever, I just don't understand how subscribing to listen to music is adventitious. Is it just not having to transfer music from the computer to your devices? Or is there something deeper I'm not getting?
Spotify is, let’s say, $120 a year. After 10 years, let’s say $1200. If an album has 5 songs, and an album costs $12.00 (dunno, middle of your range plus easy math), you can buy 100 albums in that time. 500 songs.
After 500 songs for 10 years, your model costs more and offers no value (in fact, it’s less convenient for a dozen reasons)
I don’t know about you, but I listen to way more than 500 songs… a year. Let alone a decade.
Except with Spotify the songs can go away, so it's not necessarily equivalent - you don't get access to the same music as long as you're subscribed, you get access to whatever Spotify is currently serving up.
I was an early Spotify user and that annoyed me enough to stop and go back to buying music instead.
Not OP but I agree with his sentiment. Maybe I'm not as "into music" as some people, but I do like finding new artists and songs, though probably only to the tune of 1-5 new artists a year and I buy on average about 5 new albums a year.
It's cheaper and better for me to own the stuff I want to listen to than sign up for a subscription in perpetuity.
That's fair. Hmm...maybe it's my listening habits, then?
For myself, when I listen to music, I insist on listening to it start to finish, in the order it was recorded. I hate skipping around. I find it distracting and frustrating. If I start listening to an album, I am "locked in" to finishing it.
Most albums I own are closer to 12 songs per album, with each song being in the 2-5 minute range, that makes listening somewhere around 24-60 minutes of solid music.
When I find an artist I like, I generally start to buy the other work that they've made, and will queue up their newer and older work together, too.
I will usually queue something like: new album, old album 1, old album 2, old album 3, translating close to a few solid hours of music. By the end of it, my ears will be pretty exhausted and I'll either continue in silence, or switch to an audiobook or YouTube video.
I might have a dramatically small collection of music that I listen to compared to other people, because of how I listen. I can essentially repeatedly listen to the same songs many times, but because there's a lot of stuff in-between it still feels new because I haven't fully memorized each note yet.
When you have a subscription to music, it's not about your collection as much as it is about discovery. You hear about a new artist and you want to sample their stuff. You don't have to hunt it down - you know where to find and listen to their entire discography in exactly two clicks (not counting having to type in the name of the band). If you decide you like it, nothing is stopping you from buying an album for your collection if that's your thing. Also, instead of your budget of one $10-$15 purchase per month, you can do this process multiple times a day.
I used to own a lot of albums and CDs. Worked in a music store, and would get new albums often. Even after that, music was... a big part of life. As I got older, I got fewer albums, as other things took precedence.
I subscribed to Spotify about 7 years ago, and... I'm spending about what I might otherwise spend on 'albums' now (maybe one per month) and I get a lot more - back catalogs, for one. But discovery and sampling are the biggest 'wins' for me. Might switch to apple music at some point, but probably 95% of what I want is now streaming, and the utility/affordability balance is fine for me.
Was cleaning out a room last night and found a couple boxes of old CDs and tapes. In that box of 50+cds, there were 3 I know aren't on any streaming service, as they were special 'bonus' things in specific box sets from the 90s. And I still have them, just nothing outside my car to listen to them on. And given that I haven't opened that box in 15 years... my life has been OK without using those specific CDs.
I really enjoy being able to find other versions of the same song, exploring some new genres that I would never have bothered to spend $12-$15 on otherwise, and finding some new artists (found Real Estate, which then led to all the 'related' artists, and they're all now part of my music life). Family or friends recommend some new band, I can take a listen in a few seconds, add it to a list if I want, and usually find something I like about many artists.
Funny that you talk about greed when one of the reasons everything went the way of subscriptions is because of piracy. Even here and today, people defend pirating movies when you can rent one for a few bucks in 4K HDR with Dolby.
Nothing but greed by people making top 1%-10%ile incomes.
I get pretty annoyed paying $4 to rent a movie that was released 40 years ago. It used to be that I could pay $4 to own a copy of that movie I picked up out of the bargain bin.
I still pay it though because I prefer to support companies that at least make their media available.
or you'd pay $4 for new releases, $1.88 for older movies. We'd maybe rent a new release if it was a really good one or wait 6 to 8 months.
I honestly kind of miss those days, I mean I love Netflix and chill like the next guy, usually without the chill cause we have toddlers and no energy, but it was like an event.
My aunt or grandma would be like hey let's get a movie and I'd be like yay! it's a blockbuster night! We'd often get cassanos pizza and/or popcorn and treats and watch the main movie, and the cheap ones the next day.
I kinda miss libraries too, but no clue how any programmer could work without Google, and six months in maybe gpt4, etc...
No, the invention of subscription models is not because of piracy. It's because you can keep extracting money from customers "forever", rather than just once, and continue funding your business instead of having large gaps of reduced revenue when a product has not been recently released. A moment of consideration easily reveals that SaaS was inevitable with cheap hosting/networking and readily-available worldwide payment processors.
Sources which are speaking solely about the increase in revenue (and related benefits) and not a peep about piracy:
How do you know? My experiences and knowledge of the subject indicate otherwise. I'm not convinced. (btw, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim of the existence of something, as one cannot prove that something doesn't exist)
> CAD software is a great example especially at larger orgs. Why should software be a recurring cost in the name of development and support?
But it always has been. Every larger org has always wound up purchasing upgrades. Not only for new features, but because professional tools often include all sorts of interoperability plugins and you need the upgraded ones to interact with other newer third-party products.
Maybe an individual hobbyist can get away with not upgrading, but upgrades have always been just a recurring cost for larger orgs.
While IT depts might be keen to put the genie back in the bottle they may find their ‘clients’ are less keen on waiting months to years for their needs to be met. AWS sold as an insurgent into many organisations precisely because it meant you could stand up a service in minutes, not quarters.
Man, talk about a ship that has sailed. I was 100% anti-subscription pricing for a very long time. Eventually I realized, it's better for the software vendor and the customer. Final Cut Pro used to cost $999 upfront, now a teenager can use Final Cut on their iPad for $7/month, and subscribe only when they need it.
The problem is when it adds up: you pay for FCP, for Adobe, for Office, for Figma, for X... at the end, you are paying 200 dollars per month in software (without counting Netflix, Spotify, hosting, etc).
Have you ever looked at Affinity (https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/)? I bought their universal license a year or so ago and would definitely recommend it over Adobe for anybody who doesn't necessarily need to use Adobe, it's a lifetime license and the product is pretty comparable to Photoshop/Illustrator for whatever a hobbyist could need. I would strongly recommend giving them a look if you haven't already.
Although as lovely as it would be. Sadly me knowing my mother she'd tell me its wonderful, use it once and go back to her old ways and keep telling me otherwise.
She has her system of plugging in her digital camera, scanner for her prints and then work for hours.
When windows 11 decided to update itself on her machine, it really threw her in to a spin. Luckily she was within the Ten Day "don't like" uninstall limit. That was my latest fiasco.
Just be aware: the workflow is entirely different for someone with a lot of Photoshop or Illustrator muscle memory. I couldn't figure out how to do a lot of stuff without googling (and then frequently still).
That's not a fair comparison. Final Cut Pro's price on macOS has been $299.99 since 2011, and Apple sells a "Pro Apps Bundle for Education" available to everyone that includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and other macOS apps for $199.99 (https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/product/BMGE2Z/A/pro-apps-...).
I'm sure a lot of users would appreciate a one-time payment option for Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro on the iPad, including teenagers who have some money saved up.
Especially consider the need to update your software for NLE is highly selective. H.264 and H.265 were used over the years for LongGOP, while ProRes and DNxHD/DNxHR were all supported a long time ago. There are no reasons to update unless you need latest blackmagic RAW or ProRes RAW, which are well beyond normal consumer realm. AV1 may be a new thing, but that's it.
There are no continuous vital features updates like being able to read newer camera RAW files for ACR. I find a one-time payment much more suitable for FCP.
With LPX and anything remotely in music production area the subscription just seems dumb. Omnisphere, Komplete, FL Studio, Cubase, Pro Tools, Ableton Live were all in the realm for decades, and while subscription did became a thing (especially for very expensive samples like Hollywood, Spitfire, etc.) features in a DAW are sufficient for a long life cycle in production, and mandating a subscription for "keeping latest" just seems odd.
That pricing sounds fair. Unfortunately, I feel that's the exception. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 was $400 [1]. Now Dreamweawer Creative Cloud is $250 per year [2]. So after 1.75 years, you've already taken a loss.
They don't, It's just a better result for the users who get newer and better software, and a better result for the sellers who only have to support one version and get a consistent cash flow.
But what if it is newer and not better?
Lightroom regularly breaks plugin compatibility, increases resource consumption and processing time, or simply stops working.
If your workflow depends on software, that no longer works after a forced update, what are your options?
There are people running ancient MacOS versions, because that allows them to keep using professional firewire audio interfaces they have.
How would subscription model that breaks expensive hardware compatibility, breaks all your existing photo/video projects (aperture/final cut), or breaks compatibility with really expensive plugins needed for work be better for users?
Agreed, frequently "newer and better software" simply isn't and for something that you rely upon, such as audio processing software or image/film editing tools, cannot be left to the whims of tech companies who have proved themselves over and over again to be unworthy custodians of these important tools. It's better to get a hardware+software combination that works and then just use that forever without modifying it. It will always perform as well as it did on day one, it's only pesky updates that make computers slower.
You say that, but then stuff like OnePass and Dropbox decide to reneg their subscription services down-the-line or simply make their clients worse. A lot of the time, a subscription to a program gives the developer no incentive to iterate on what already exists.
And then you just drop them for a competitor. Since you have no sunk costs, you lose nothing by hopping to whatever the best option is other than a small amount of pain migrating, But for something like dropbox, there isn't that much lock in.
I've never heard of OnePass so I have no idea, but Dropbox is very easy to replace. I'm also not even sure how you'd expect a "pay once" model to work for cloud storage.
For cloud storage a subscription model makes perfect sense, since the entire point is that you're renting server space on an ongoing basis. What I don't want to do is have to rent simple machine code that should be executable by my processor perfectly fine without any third party involved. Why should I have to rent Photoshop if it runs perfectly fine without internet access? I'm not renting server space from Adobe. It costs them nothing for me to run the software. They just want to charge me on an ongoing basis for no good reason.
For a password manager KeePassXC is better than all proprietary offerings and it's free and plenty of implementations are available on all major platforms.
Office used to be $600 for one copy that could run on one operating system.
I can now get an Office 365 subscription for $99 a year for five users and I can use it on my Mac, a Windows PC, iPad, iPhone and all five users get 1TB of storage each
Plus the latest version of the software. I would still be using Office 2013 if I had to pay what I paid for it to upgrade every release (multiplied by the half a dozen or so O365 licenses I'm currently using.)
Office is also just cheaper, it's 1/4 the price for the lifetime license than it used to be. The family offering is still the best deal I've seen to get it though. Not all subscriptions allow multiple users or even you to use it at the same time on multiple devices though, Office is just pushing that sale.
If you used to need to use software for a weeklong project, you'd have to pirate it because there was no way to justify the cost.
Now you just sign up for a month and then cancel.
It's a huge improvement in flexibility and paying for what you use. Not to mention the software is always updated, so you don't need to worry about whether your image editor you purchased 7 years ago supports the RAW format of the camera that came out 2 years ago.
I mean, that's one customer service rep who was being difficult (not necessarily representative of Adobe policy at all), and the user was trying to cancel a yearly subscription on the 365th day when it was already being charged for autorenewal that day.
That's not even remotely representative of someone who signs up for a monthly subscription and then cancels it before the month is up. But yes, obviously you have to put it in your calendar to remember to cancel it. It's not that hard.
There are complaints about everything all over the internet.
In my experience, I've never once had a problem cancelling SaaS. There will always be bad actors out there, and maybe Adobe has been one, and maybe they still are, but on the whole I haven't found SaaS to be any worse than anything else.
And it's not really where the economic incentives lie -- someone who is cancelling is someone who is likely to sign up again in the future, so it's generally not in a business's best interests to piss them off.
> It's a huge improvement in flexibility and paying for what you use. Not to mention the software is always updated, so you don't need to worry about whether your image editor you purchased 7 years ago supports the RAW format of the camera that came out 2 years ago.
I see this the other way. I don't want to be forced to upgrade. If you add valuable features, I'll pay for them. Otherwise, I'm happy to stick with what I have. Oftentimes the upgrades come with a new UX to learn, are slower, and remove functionality I relied on all to add new stuff I have no need for.
I think JetBrains hits an interesting middle ground. I can run whatever version of the IDE I want (as far as I can tell) but pay to have access to the full suite.
I'm not a huge fan of subscriptions but like the way JetBrains handled a few things:
- if you're subscribed for 12 months, you get a perpetual license for the version at the start of that period (unfortunately not the end, but better than most subscriptions)
- fairly significant discounts for second and third+ years.
- they had a price increase either 2022 that was in line or below inflation, which they announced it clearly three months in advance -- no "beware of the leopard" -- and gave users an opportunity to prepurchase three years at the old rates in advance.
I was apprehensive about the JetBrains one at first, but they sold me on having the perpetual license. It may have even just been a mental block. I was paying almost annually to upgrade IntelliJ IDEA (and sometimes RubyMine) as it was. The package that includes all of the IDEs was more than what I was paying just for IDEA, but cheaper than paying for upgrades on two products. I've dutifully subscribed since and enjoy access to all of the IDEs.
I may never use the perpetual license, but it made me feel better about the whole thing. I don't have to worry about what happens if my fortunes change and I can't afford one year. Or, I don't have to worry about vendor lock-in and a huge price increase. I don't want to invest time into a tool when the future of it is uncertain or where I could be cut off on a whim. This is a rare situation where I think everyone wins.
I, for one, am very grateful for Adobe's shitty subscription model, as it has allowed companies like Serif to launch fantastic products with perpetual licenses.
That particular case feels better because the original price you mention was incredibly high, not because the model is better for the customer. Especially when more than 1 application does that.
Sure, as long as Adobe doesn't arbitrarily decide to permanently ban your account and no longer accept your money. Also, speaking of ships that have sailed, you could just as easily check out Final Cut Pro or Adobe subscriptions from some libraries for no additional fee.
15 years ago most teenagers i knew had the full office suite, photoshop and most other softwares for free. I'm not gonna tell you how, but it's easy to imagine.
Guess what, those people wouldn't have paid for a license anyway, so no real license money is lost.
More importantly, it needs to be said that if you got an older computer you could just use an older version of the software, no problem. Now you can't do that anymore. You not only have to pay the 7$/month, you also need to buy a new ipad every once in a while.
I'm still anti subscription. I do pay for software (paid 150 euros out of my personal pocket last year for a SecureCRT license and i love it).
Its always been an open question to me in the case of Adobe if rampant piracy in the 2000s helped rather than hinder them. If these teenagers went on to work in industry, they already knew the adobe suite inside out and likely ended up advocating the software and buying licenses in the workplace... As you probably rightly state, almost none of the folks pirating the software would have converted to real sales anyway.
> Its always been an open question to me in the case of Adobe if rampant piracy in the 2000s helped rather than hinder them.
it's not an open question, there are studies about how piracy helps industries (it was about media, it was financed by the EU, but when they got the results they didn't like it so they didn't advertised it much).
if not for product advocacy, consider product training: training is expensive and takes time, and most teenagers would do that themselves for free on your product. so if you're a company and pick a product that's heavily pirated, chances are some random applicant already knows the product.
how do you think microsoft office got so widespread ?
> paid 150 euros out of my personal pocket last year for a SecureCRT license and i love it
I'm curious what makes SecureCRT better than PuTTY or even Windows Terminal enough to be worth paying for - am I missing out on some amazing experience, or does it have certain amazing features others lack, or...?
i like the fact that i can have a list of session at mouse reach. i like that i can do stuff like have sessions with different color schemes, or sessions that run a command on startup.
i like the fact that it's scriptable. at my previous job i had a python script (that i could recall from a button within securecrt) that would enumerate stuff off consul and create/update sessions on the fly, with all the necessary hoops in place (eg: setting a jump host).
i have to say, i also have some nostalgia of my first job where we used securecrt heavily (or maybe i'm just nostalgic about being 24 years old? i don't know...).
But that's not how the subscription pricing goes. Final Cut Pro X was $299, not $999 so it's not even a good example.
One the other end of the spectrum are all the mobile apps that start as a $2.99 one time purchase, add a bunch of features, and say "Actually it'll be $11.99/year forever thanks."
It’s a no brainer, the vendor gets paid for the continued work they do and the user pays over time as long as they get value out of the product.
However, For some apps it makes sense to have it as a one time payment - things like offline games or utilities the solve a problem and don’t need continuous updates.
Other than that, subscriptions are the way to go because software is a service more than a final product.
I have an iOS app that I love and rely upon, but it’s effectively abandonware because the developer didn’t charge enough. I too am pro-subscription: take my money, please.
Until you look at Intuit, you used to be able to buy their accounting software and have the critical records for your business. Now their accounting software requires an internet connection and a subscription and puts your critical records behind a paywall and gives them access to your data for whatever purpose they want. And they keep ratcheting up the price and putting more and more features behind higher tier subscriptions.
Prior to SaaS, we had software packages that weren't updated, and often became abandonware because companies could not afford to maintain the software without growing sales demand. It left us in a very insecure world with bugs that wouldn't go away.
Say what you will about recurring SaaS payments, but software is more secure and supported than ever before. SaaS companies don't go away like old box software companies did. When new platforms take over the old ones, they provide migration paths.
Yes, ONCE will give you the source, but what company is prepared to support another company's abandonware? This isn't a bad deal for software libraries, I've used libraries that became abandonware because the companies went under. I really though it would be good for companies to put their source in escrow and you get access to it in the event the company stops supporting you.
The Ruby on Rails stack may shine with this. Every cloud provider has hosting instructions. With the gem ecosystem, you can eliminate 3rd party SaaS dependencies that most startups rely on. That's why tools like Gitlab, Github Enterprise, etc. are so easy to self-host.
I'm most excited to buy Once software so that I can study the source code as an educational resource.
I would guess they just give you a Docker container, otherwise supporting different configurations and host machines sounds like too much of a hassle. Even some libraries shipping with the OS could influence the behaviour outside of pinned gems.
Exactly this - if a web app, it should be offered primarily as a container image for self-hosting support - the age of <insert specific program runtime here> artifacts that the customer installs and runs on an installation of said specific runtime are almost long gone. As a customer, I'd even question why I wasn't handed a container image if they tried to ship me build artifacts and a runtime of some kind.
People can't host their own software. The handful of people who can host software won't install security updates or deal with backups. It's a drag. It makes no sense for millions of people to individually manage servers and server updates when it can be done centrally for a fraction of the cost. That's why SaaS won, ultimately.
I don't believe for a second 37signals is going to make desktop apps that you just install to your machine. These will be dockerized web apps with many fragile dependencies. This is a step backwards, frankly. If you want to make buy-once-zero-maintenance software the client software should automatically join a fully distributed peer-to-peer network. The alternative is for 37signals to offer the digital service part at cost.
They didn't actually launch anything though. And self-hosting is also a real pain. There can be reasons but I seriously doubt many IT departments yearn deeply for the on-premise deployment days of yore.
This. People seem to forget that employee time costs $$$$. You take on a lot more operational burden and that has a real cost attached to it and in organizations of all sizes that makes the calculus interesting.
Let's go back to wax cylinders, horses & buggies, and the old crank phone while we're at it!
Jokes aside: What kind of new features and tangible improvements are coming?
I get that "owning" a piece of software can have tangible value; but it depends on the purpose of the software and how it's used. I don't see a sudden revolution where all companies decide they want to run their own email servers and and host their own copies of Office 365. Instead, there needs to be use cases where the old-style purchase model and host-it-yourself model makes sense.
You do GIS projects infrequently as a hobby. Simple stuff. You want own some GIS software. Subscription is burdensome due to infrequent use and you don’t care about next year’s features.
the only good ones I can think of are ai related to own the data, and privacy, but the compute and tech needed, you'd be better to just have the whole system in a black box like old school cable tv receivers, with a rack of a100s, software that can receive firmware updates etc, but probably isn't that extendable.
I don't buy into this. I'd rather pay monthly, and have them charge monthly to all the users so they sustain in the long-term and not keep going out of business. I hated AppSumo LTD for this same reason.
The reality is that most software isn't designed like a car is. Especially with most organizations using some iterative+incremental development approach.
As a result, the development of software nowadays doesn't really lend itself to one-time purchases.
You really should only have to buy software once. It is quite dumb that we have to be subscribed to everything. This is what makes me use open source everything. Subscriptions are services and if I need a service to write documents FML.
218 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadI say this as a personal subscriber to the JetBrains Toolbox. I'm unhappy about the mechanics of the fallback license, but I also find utility in paying the subscription for right now (really the last few years).
The fact that they do churn out lots of good updates is an argument for SaaS.
I bought that subscription in September 2022, after having paid monthly for a long while.
Now I won’t have to think about renewing the subscription again until September 2025.
I'm looking at you, Sketch.
But you're right, now that I'm reading the FAQ on their pricing page, I'm finding it really confusing:
"""
Q: Is Sketch only available as a subscription?
A: No. You can still get a Mac-only license for $120 yearly [sic] if you don’t need the web app and only want to use the Mac app to design. (...)
"""
Their answer seems rather contradictory. Does anybody know whether they offer perpetual licenses or not? Or know of a competitor who does?
[0]: https://workingcopyapp.com
I myself could see 3-$500 and self host on my own hardware / vps - with options to pay for future upgrades that include new features if wanted.
I like basecamp, and would consider buying in that way, but there is more and more competition in the space that makes others attractive, and with the speed of changes with the others paying 24 months of service in advance doesn't make as much sense at it would in a smaller space. For me anyway.
Good for them I guess, I do hope we see more custom artisan software out there and less VC SaaS milkcows
But yeah I agree
Just one last attempt to extract every cent of good will out of a consumer before they truly cotton on.
At least, that's my sour angle of it. As much as I want this 'model' again.
But yes, generally DHH seems too absolutist in his takes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35851822
Before SaaS there used to be a massive pool of native apps, doing all kinds of different things... You indeed paid your license and lived with the product until the next major version, but there was little chance to just use something for a month or two, so the prices were higher.
With SaaS you do end up renting stuff all over the place, and never owning anything, but the prices are more affordable... Think about an AutoCAD license, that shit is privative for a hobbyist... With SaaS you can in fact afford something to begin with.
In reality, corporations are driven by greed and greed pushed the subscription model. For some situations, subscriptions work well - music is one. For others, it is terrible. CAD software is a great example especially at larger orgs. Why should software be a recurring cost in the name of development and support?
> For some situations, subscriptions work well - music is one.
I've only ever purchased albums. Why in the world would I pay a monthly fee for something I presumably want to listen for for the rest of my life? 10-15$ for a one time purchase is far preferable to a monthly fee of nearly the same. I'm also weary of the idea of the services that have the right to stream music from labels X, Y, and Z suddenly pulling out, cutting off my access to the albums from artists I want to listen to at any given time.
I hope none of that comes off sounding "snobby" or whatever, I just don't understand how subscribing to listen to music is adventitious. Is it just not having to transfer music from the computer to your devices? Or is there something deeper I'm not getting?
After 500 songs for 10 years, your model costs more and offers no value (in fact, it’s less convenient for a dozen reasons)
I don’t know about you, but I listen to way more than 500 songs… a year. Let alone a decade.
I was an early Spotify user and that annoyed me enough to stop and go back to buying music instead.
BTW, albums usually have more than 5 songs.
Maybe they've improved in recent years, and maybe it depends on the music/artists involved.
It's cheaper and better for me to own the stuff I want to listen to than sign up for a subscription in perpetuity.
For myself, when I listen to music, I insist on listening to it start to finish, in the order it was recorded. I hate skipping around. I find it distracting and frustrating. If I start listening to an album, I am "locked in" to finishing it.
Most albums I own are closer to 12 songs per album, with each song being in the 2-5 minute range, that makes listening somewhere around 24-60 minutes of solid music.
When I find an artist I like, I generally start to buy the other work that they've made, and will queue up their newer and older work together, too.
I will usually queue something like: new album, old album 1, old album 2, old album 3, translating close to a few solid hours of music. By the end of it, my ears will be pretty exhausted and I'll either continue in silence, or switch to an audiobook or YouTube video.
I might have a dramatically small collection of music that I listen to compared to other people, because of how I listen. I can essentially repeatedly listen to the same songs many times, but because there's a lot of stuff in-between it still feels new because I haven't fully memorized each note yet.
I subscribed to Spotify about 7 years ago, and... I'm spending about what I might otherwise spend on 'albums' now (maybe one per month) and I get a lot more - back catalogs, for one. But discovery and sampling are the biggest 'wins' for me. Might switch to apple music at some point, but probably 95% of what I want is now streaming, and the utility/affordability balance is fine for me.
Was cleaning out a room last night and found a couple boxes of old CDs and tapes. In that box of 50+cds, there were 3 I know aren't on any streaming service, as they were special 'bonus' things in specific box sets from the 90s. And I still have them, just nothing outside my car to listen to them on. And given that I haven't opened that box in 15 years... my life has been OK without using those specific CDs.
I really enjoy being able to find other versions of the same song, exploring some new genres that I would never have bothered to spend $12-$15 on otherwise, and finding some new artists (found Real Estate, which then led to all the 'related' artists, and they're all now part of my music life). Family or friends recommend some new band, I can take a listen in a few seconds, add it to a list if I want, and usually find something I like about many artists.
Nothing but greed by people making top 1%-10%ile incomes.
I still pay it though because I prefer to support companies that at least make their media available.
I honestly kind of miss those days, I mean I love Netflix and chill like the next guy, usually without the chill cause we have toddlers and no energy, but it was like an event.
My aunt or grandma would be like hey let's get a movie and I'd be like yay! it's a blockbuster night! We'd often get cassanos pizza and/or popcorn and treats and watch the main movie, and the cheap ones the next day.
I kinda miss libraries too, but no clue how any programmer could work without Google, and six months in maybe gpt4, etc...
Sources which are speaking solely about the increase in revenue (and related benefits) and not a peep about piracy:
https://hbr.org/2023/04/the-rebirth-of-software-as-a-service
https://bebusinessed.com/history/the-history-of-saas/
https://smartbear.com/blog/the-pre-history-of-software-as-a-...
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/history-of-saas/
But it always has been. Every larger org has always wound up purchasing upgrades. Not only for new features, but because professional tools often include all sorts of interoperability plugins and you need the upgraded ones to interact with other newer third-party products.
Maybe an individual hobbyist can get away with not upgrading, but upgrades have always been just a recurring cost for larger orgs.
It a distraught for her to think of losing access to her creatively outlet if she was to unable to afford the current subscription model.
Subscriptions should be followed up with a perpetual license. She's just glad she forked out on CS2 when it was DVD based.
Although as lovely as it would be. Sadly me knowing my mother she'd tell me its wonderful, use it once and go back to her old ways and keep telling me otherwise.
She has her system of plugging in her digital camera, scanner for her prints and then work for hours.
When windows 11 decided to update itself on her machine, it really threw her in to a spin. Luckily she was within the Ten Day "don't like" uninstall limit. That was my latest fiasco.
I'm sure a lot of users would appreciate a one-time payment option for Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro on the iPad, including teenagers who have some money saved up.
There are no continuous vital features updates like being able to read newer camera RAW files for ACR. I find a one-time payment much more suitable for FCP.
With LPX and anything remotely in music production area the subscription just seems dumb. Omnisphere, Komplete, FL Studio, Cubase, Pro Tools, Ableton Live were all in the realm for decades, and while subscription did became a thing (especially for very expensive samples like Hollywood, Spitfire, etc.) features in a DAW are sufficient for a long life cycle in production, and mandating a subscription for "keeping latest" just seems odd.
[1] https://prodesigntools.com/products/adobe-cs6-pricing-list.h...
[2] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html
1. CS6 came out in 2012. According to the BLS calculator, $400 in 2012 is $532 today: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=400.00&year1=2...
2. You're cherry picking the worst one, do the math for CS6 After Effects at $999 (~$1.3k today) vs $21/month and you only break even after >5 years.
Additionally the individual Dreamweaver price is very high compared to "All Apps" plan at $660 per year.
but nobody does that, really.
most people i know skip entire versions of windows (eg: 7->10), let a lone individual software releases.
I remember installing and using pirated versions of Photoshop 6, and then Photoshop 7, and then Creative Suite 2.
I bought an academic license for Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.
Later I subscribed to Creative Cloud for a while. But I swore to not buy from Adobe again after that because that was actually a bad experience.
There are people running ancient MacOS versions, because that allows them to keep using professional firewire audio interfaces they have.
How would subscription model that breaks expensive hardware compatibility, breaks all your existing photo/video projects (aperture/final cut), or breaks compatibility with really expensive plugins needed for work be better for users?
In most cases this is entirely unrealistic.
For a password manager KeePassXC is better than all proprietary offerings and it's free and plenty of implementations are available on all major platforms.
I don’t want to defend Adobe, but inflation is real.
And they used to have upgrades that cost less money.
I think this price is more or less what it used to be, the real advantages of that everyone’s just up-to-date all the time.
I can’t imagine trying to support software on like 20 different versions, that would’ve been insanity for the support team.
Keeping everyone on one version is probably the real cost savings money maker for Adobe here. =P
Office used to be $600 for one copy that could run on one operating system.
I can now get an Office 365 subscription for $99 a year for five users and I can use it on my Mac, a Windows PC, iPad, iPhone and all five users get 1TB of storage each
If you used to need to use software for a weeklong project, you'd have to pirate it because there was no way to justify the cost.
Now you just sign up for a month and then cancel.
It's a huge improvement in flexibility and paying for what you use. Not to mention the software is always updated, so you don't need to worry about whether your image editor you purchased 7 years ago supports the RAW format of the camera that came out 2 years ago.
Or you sign up and then Adobe does everything in its power to stop you from cancelling, including lying to your face: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10930079 (https://web.archive.org/web/20170324161306/http://www.geek.c...). Just because subscriptions can work out well doesn't mean they don't get abused by companies.
That's not even remotely representative of someone who signs up for a monthly subscription and then cancels it before the month is up. But yes, obviously you have to put it in your calendar to remember to cancel it. It's not that hard.
In my experience, I've never once had a problem cancelling SaaS. There will always be bad actors out there, and maybe Adobe has been one, and maybe they still are, but on the whole I haven't found SaaS to be any worse than anything else.
And it's not really where the economic incentives lie -- someone who is cancelling is someone who is likely to sign up again in the future, so it's generally not in a business's best interests to piss them off.
I see this the other way. I don't want to be forced to upgrade. If you add valuable features, I'll pay for them. Otherwise, I'm happy to stick with what I have. Oftentimes the upgrades come with a new UX to learn, are slower, and remove functionality I relied on all to add new stuff I have no need for.
I think JetBrains hits an interesting middle ground. I can run whatever version of the IDE I want (as far as I can tell) but pay to have access to the full suite.
- if you're subscribed for 12 months, you get a perpetual license for the version at the start of that period (unfortunately not the end, but better than most subscriptions)
- fairly significant discounts for second and third+ years.
- they had a price increase either 2022 that was in line or below inflation, which they announced it clearly three months in advance -- no "beware of the leopard" -- and gave users an opportunity to prepurchase three years at the old rates in advance.
I may never use the perpetual license, but it made me feel better about the whole thing. I don't have to worry about what happens if my fortunes change and I can't afford one year. Or, I don't have to worry about vendor lock-in and a huge price increase. I don't want to invest time into a tool when the future of it is uncertain or where I could be cut off on a whim. This is a rare situation where I think everyone wins.
EDIT: I think I've misunderstood the V2 Universal License. Looks like it means I get access to all version 2 apps from Affinity.
Guess what, those people wouldn't have paid for a license anyway, so no real license money is lost.
More importantly, it needs to be said that if you got an older computer you could just use an older version of the software, no problem. Now you can't do that anymore. You not only have to pay the 7$/month, you also need to buy a new ipad every once in a while.
I'm still anti subscription. I do pay for software (paid 150 euros out of my personal pocket last year for a SecureCRT license and i love it).
But the whole subscription thing is just BS.
it's not an open question, there are studies about how piracy helps industries (it was about media, it was financed by the EU, but when they got the results they didn't like it so they didn't advertised it much).
if not for product advocacy, consider product training: training is expensive and takes time, and most teenagers would do that themselves for free on your product. so if you're a company and pick a product that's heavily pirated, chances are some random applicant already knows the product.
how do you think microsoft office got so widespread ?
I'm curious what makes SecureCRT better than PuTTY or even Windows Terminal enough to be worth paying for - am I missing out on some amazing experience, or does it have certain amazing features others lack, or...?
i like the fact that it's scriptable. at my previous job i had a python script (that i could recall from a button within securecrt) that would enumerate stuff off consul and create/update sessions on the fly, with all the necessary hoops in place (eg: setting a jump host).
i have to say, i also have some nostalgia of my first job where we used securecrt heavily (or maybe i'm just nostalgic about being 24 years old? i don't know...).
One the other end of the spectrum are all the mobile apps that start as a $2.99 one time purchase, add a bunch of features, and say "Actually it'll be $11.99/year forever thanks."
When every app starts to do that it adds up fast.
However, For some apps it makes sense to have it as a one time payment - things like offline games or utilities the solve a problem and don’t need continuous updates.
Other than that, subscriptions are the way to go because software is a service more than a final product.
Say what you will about recurring SaaS payments, but software is more secure and supported than ever before. SaaS companies don't go away like old box software companies did. When new platforms take over the old ones, they provide migration paths.
Yes, ONCE will give you the source, but what company is prepared to support another company's abandonware? This isn't a bad deal for software libraries, I've used libraries that became abandonware because the companies went under. I really though it would be good for companies to put their source in escrow and you get access to it in the event the company stops supporting you.
I'm most excited to buy Once software so that I can study the source code as an educational resource.
This reminds me of TailwindUI, but for SaaS.
I would guess they just give you a Docker container, otherwise supporting different configurations and host machines sounds like too much of a hassle. Even some libraries shipping with the OS could influence the behaviour outside of pinned gems.
People can't host their own software. The handful of people who can host software won't install security updates or deal with backups. It's a drag. It makes no sense for millions of people to individually manage servers and server updates when it can be done centrally for a fraction of the cost. That's why SaaS won, ultimately.
I don't believe for a second 37signals is going to make desktop apps that you just install to your machine. These will be dockerized web apps with many fragile dependencies. This is a step backwards, frankly. If you want to make buy-once-zero-maintenance software the client software should automatically join a fully distributed peer-to-peer network. The alternative is for 37signals to offer the digital service part at cost.
Jokes aside: What kind of new features and tangible improvements are coming?
I get that "owning" a piece of software can have tangible value; but it depends on the purpose of the software and how it's used. I don't see a sudden revolution where all companies decide they want to run their own email servers and and host their own copies of Office 365. Instead, there needs to be use cases where the old-style purchase model and host-it-yourself model makes sense.
And these use cases are...?
As a result, the development of software nowadays doesn't really lend itself to one-time purchases.
With that kind of stuff I don’t expect updates and bug fixes, improved usability and the kind every week.
But when I’m am renting a house… I expect my landlord to care of it. These are the different deals I guess.