> Presumably it costs them money to develop these new features. Why do you feel like you should have access to new features if you are not a subscriber?

Nobody said anything about not being willing to pay money for (new) software/features.

The problem is the subscription model. On of the problems with subscriptions is you loose track of what (new features) you are paying for. Especially when you don't have a lot of money, this is problematic. When making a 1 time purchase, it's very clear what you are paying for. (and cloud services are free already with iCloud sync/Google drive/etc. so the 1password cloud is superfluous, feels like just another excuse to sell a subscription model.)

I mean, are you aware that you are paying $2,99 * 12 * 3 = $107,64 for 3 years of 1Password usage? And that's just 1 of the many app subscriptions...

> I mean, are you aware that you are paying $2,99 * 12 * 3 = $107,64 for 3 years

Yes, I'm aware and perfectly fine with it. It's a pretty good price considering.

Subscription model is the only one that makes any sense. These days you can't expect to run a program for many years, because the environment changes too quickly. Programs need to be updated for newer OSs and the world that changes around them. This costs money.

I don't buy it – rather, I can't buy it!

I am happy to exchange money for new versions of software that offer new features, or for compatibility with new versions of operating systems. I expect to pay money for software, have it functioning and supported for an agreed period (say, a couple of years), and then to pay again if I want to continue using it with fancy new features.

That doesn't seem unreasonable or difficult to offer?

I've seen this model used at collectorz.com - you buy the software, and it comes with one year of updates. When that year expires, you are basically frozen at the last version of the software, or you can choose to buy an additional year of support for about half the cost of the initial purchase. Seems to be a reasonable compromise to me.

At what point are software developers obligated to provide purchase models to suit you? Is not like there's an inherent right to have whatever software you like in whatever form or payment model you like, any more than the OP complaining that somehow having bought multiple versions of software isn't getting a new feature back ported.

I should be clear that nobody’s obligated to do so! Sell your software using whatever model you want. But I think it’s fair to complain when companies don’t offer basic models like “sell me new versions of your product in exchange for money”.

Accept our "subscription model," i.e.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_option_billing

If you feel your bill is in error, please feel free to contact our Customer Support number between 10:00 AM and 3:36 PM Philippines Standard Time.

I agree. I'm thinking about the commercial software I've bought - most of it doesn't include perpetual upgrades (I'm a 1Password license holder who bought into the subscription when it became available - it's easily worth the $7 I pay for my family)

Agreed. This idea is essentially that you entitle yourself to all of someone's future time because you paid them for time they already invested.

They already give you future time in the form of bug fixes. To ask for more is blind entitlement and quite silly, yet absolutely rampant.

It's kind of like how we say everyone should work in the food industry for a while because it sobers you up to reality. Maybe the same should be said for trying to sell software or run a website that has actual users.

Those are two additional ways to see how poorly some people will regard you no matter what you do, just like working in the food industry or retail.

> This idea is essentially that you entitle yourself to all of someone's future time because you paid them for time they already invested.

I mean, that's precisely what you do when you buy equity in a company. One time payment goes in, permanent entitlement comes out.

What does that matter? Was the OP an investor taking on risk?

Not quite sure how that's even an exception to what I'm talking about.

People who pay for the products of early-stage startups (or, say, back Kickstarters) have an emotional intuition that they've invested in the company, despite there being no legal truth to that fact.

As a growing company, you have to keep that in mind when modifying your business model: you can't betray the (entirely incorrect!) emotional intuitions of your customers, or they'll boycott you.

Actually you can. I've heard it called "firing your least profitable customers."

I haven't heard too many postmortems of people that've gone "we should've given in to the entitlement of a portion of our users." But I do hear the opposite.

That is true, but the price structures are different. Stock prices, and other equities, are already priced with everyone knowing that you have permanent ownership. Software isn't priced that way. If it were then I would expect prices to be much higher.