Re:A Critical Analysis of the Subscription Economy
by TimJYoung on Friday July 14, 2017 @01:42PM
(#14771662)
Spot-on.
It's almost impossible to keep mature products going without a subscription model. Mature products eventually only need:
a) support and
b) compatibility/stability/performance updates.
But, these types of updates can be very expensive to develop and are very difficult to market as a new release (works with XXXX now isn't a very compelling proposition for upgrades).
It's kind of the same problem that open source software faces after it matures. Nobody wants to just sit and do support/incremental changes on old software, at least not for free.
It's almost impossible to keep mature products going without a subscription model. Mature products eventually only need:
a) support and b) compatibility/stability/performance updates.
But, these types of updates can be very expensive to develop and are very difficult to market as a new release (works with XXXX now isn't a very compelling proposition for upgrades).
It's kind of the same problem that open source software faces after it matures. Nobody wants to just sit and do support/incremental changes on old software, at least not for free.