I don't want to justify the "cheapness" of the software users, which is certainly excessive, but the feeling of ownership of a physical object is still very different from software.
For example, you can easily lend your toolbox to a friend, your hammer won't ever stop functioning through no fault of your own, you can re-sell or gift a chainsaw if you want to get a new one.
Since software is immaterial, we've ended up in a situation where these basic things don't work, people do not feel like they actually _own_ software, and thus feel less motivated to buy it.
And I don't know about you but the first thing I do when I get a paper manual is go online to try to find a PDF version. Seems more like a downside than a value-add?
I think one of the key challenges of this decade in the software industry is figuring out how the development and maintenance of high-quality software can be funded in sustainable ways. There is clearly a need for high-quality software that is not ad-supported, is not subscription-based, and does not monetize user data. However, the days of shrink-wrapped software and the shareware business model are over. If we want high-quality software, then we will need to come up with an answer to this problem.
Vendors get recurring money and aren't incentivized to make sweeping changes to have major releases to get more money for the same product; consumers can manage cash flow by only paying while they need it, there is a lower barrier to purchase, and vendors have more predictable income.
1) If it's for a piece of software I use on an ongoing basis the cost often rapidly eclipses what I'd have paid for standalone software, and it never stops rising.
2) There's usually some awkwardly contrived cloud tie-in, purely to enforce subscriptions, which breaks the software if your internet connection or the supplier's servers are down. This adds a completely unnecessary external dependency.
3) You're entirely at the vendor's mercy if they decide to change the software. At the very least, you're subjected to constant small breakages of your workflow, and at worst they change some major feature that you depend on and put you out of business for days or weeks until you find a workaround.
Edit: Also 4) The aforementioned awkward cloud tie-in often brings with it some gnarly privacy issues, with your sensitive files and private data being leeched off to the vendor's servers FoR YoUR ConVeNIeNcE.
The JetBrains model is good because I'm able to keep using a version without paying for upgrades (but I have kept up anyway as the annual fee is so cheap for what I get).
The points you've made are why I don't typically get software that is truly 'rental only' or hits your other points. That said, I've not run in to too many in the past few years that are affected by those issues any more. Are there some in particular you're thinking of that have those problems?
[1] It would probably be difficult contractually, but such things happen. See e.g. TextDrive hosting lifetime accounts.
Easy to support a couple hundred whoppers who pay big money on the coasts -- and who also have the time and money to really learn the tool. Expand that out to 100,000 customers with lower costs and greater support needs and it doesn't make sense.
High quality software has always required a recurring payment model. It's not viable to sell standalone versions to a new set of customers each year. In the past this was informal with upgrade versions every year. You could theoretically choose not to upgrade but software developers would have all kinds of tricks to "encourage you" such as not providing forwards compatible file formats.
What the subscription model does is align customers with the realities of software development. Yes the cost of software never stops rising but neither do the maintenance costs.
That depends. On macOS the churn is high. But there are probably a lot of Windows applications from the nineties that still run unmodified.
It's a good balance—if you spend extra time on worthwhile changes, the users need to pay for that time. The users can also decide to stick with what they have if they don't think your changes were worthwhile, which may be a perfectly reasonable path.
But yes, the cognitive load is a big one for me too.
I know it is an imperfect metaphor, but it helps get my point across that valuing ownership doesn’t make someone cheap. It makes them unwilling to lease software.
First, because they have to compete with the likes of Office 365, which offers an Office Suite, 1TB cloud storage, and 60 Skype minutes (at least the used to) for little over 5 Euro per month. Subscriptions for more basic programs will look overpriced in comparison.
Second, as subscriptions become the new normal, we will see services like Apple Arcade. I think Apple Arcade will eventually eat up a lot of revenue as casual gamers will move from purchasing games to the 'all you can eat' Arcade. If Apple Arcade turns out to be successful, what holds them from launching 'App Arcade' [1]? Vendors that don't get into the App Arcade will lose a lot of revenue, vendors that do get into App Arcade will have a steady source of income, but will also be completely at the mercy of Apple (or Microsoft).
[1] I know there is SetApp, but anything that Apple launches has a lot more visibility. They also have more clout to get high profile applications in such a service.
Look at Microsoft's behavior with O365. Many companies will be fully locked into Microsoft across voice, security and identity verticals based on tweaks to the O365/M365 licensing models. You need Azure AD to meet your email compliance requirements, but that's bundled with Intune, which in turn has a co-bundle with Defender ATP, etc.
Were you paying for something like a Linux distribution? You can often do that on a subscription as well if you want to.
I also payed for multiple version on iPad.
However at about the point that they released their own sync service, they just let it stagnate.
There are so many ways the iOS and MacVersions could be more modern and more useful on a day to day level, none of which require a massive re-engineering effort.
My conclusion is that they have just fallen behind the times.
Don't we spend on software, though? Software spend is surely in the billions, if not tens or hundreds of billions a year. As consummate consumers of software, I'd think software engineers are more likely to spend money on software than the general public (and more likely to use open-source software as well).
a. Debuggers
b. IDEs
c. Querying Tools
d. Text editors
e. Source control tools
f. Build systems
The market for development tools does not look particularly vibrant based on the above.
The huge problem with them is that they're proprietary. They don't have the wide usage of the open source equivalents, so debugging problems is hard. If you want to develop at home, at work and on a PC in a lab, you have to navigate licensing issues. If you want to do a build and test as part of your CI process, you have to navigate licensing issues. Then you move jobs and they've bought into a different, incompatible proprietary system and you have to learn it all over again.
The open source options are actually good enough, and the advantage of being able to have the entire build system on a new computer after running a few apt-gets and downloading some free software is huge. The skills persist across jobs, I can use them at home for my own projects, I never have to worry about licenses expiring.
But, these are all pretty easy to start for a single hacker who can recruit help to expand an open source version.
Developer tooling (Developer machines, IDE's, source control, CI, issue tracking, etc): Pay for the best.
The product: Only use FOSS. Give back by contributing and by making some of our work available as FOSS.
For the product, especially for the client-side, I just see it as too risky to include proprietary software. Even if the pricing is fine for right now, it can easily change later (got burned by both Google Maps and Mapbox years ago), and in some cases even prevent you from using different pricing models because of base costs it may add per user.
On the infrastructure side I'm more flexible, but even there: 1. Stick to commoditized services as far as possible, where the pricing is predictable. I'd include most cloud services in this, and most "enterprise" offerings not. 2. Avoid hard vendor lock-in if feasible, but only up to a point (don't build something from scratch just to avoid the lock-in).
Proprietary software lock-in in your product can generally be very damaging when things go wrong. I know of one company which was so throughly fucked over that they had to halt all feature development for 6 months while they were busy building a replacement. Cost them enough time and customers to a competitor. For non-product stuff, replacing proprietary software is a bitch but far less disrupting.
The potential customer was a software company, meaning that the only way they make money is if others pay—which they were unwilling to do themselves.
A lathe does what a lathe does every time. Even if the company goes out of business, there will be parts available for it for a while. No one at the lathe company can decide that it will stop performing feature X because it isn't popular or make enough money.
This leads into the second point. Companies (and individuals) have become fearful of external dependencies. So they push for FOSS so that they can avoid lock-in. Or they adopt an "invent here" mentality. Look at how many technology projects Google has cancelled despite the fact that they have infinite money.
I happily pay for it.
I have used it for years and years, for normal stuff like software diagrams and business process and shit like that, but also for stuff like floor-planning my house and doing mockups to decide what furniture and TVs to buy, to making easy-to-understand political comic books to influence how my friends vote (old example: https://masonmark.com/stuff/2008/America.pdf), and I even used it to create the CV which helped land me the awesome job I have now (http://www.fivespeed.com/mason/resume/mason_resume.pdf).
According to rumor, the principal guy behind OmniGraffle had a fairly unusual employment arrangement and wasn't typically seen that often in the halls of Omni — I don't know the details, or even his name, but as an OmniGraffle-dependent user I'm wondering with some trepidation if he was part of these layoffs.
I also wonder if being MacOS/iOS only has hurt them, in the long run, more than they'd like to admit?
Personally, I own most of Omni's software, but I won't be upgrading to new versions when they come out.
OmniFocus was once the cornerstone of my productivity. It was expensive and I didn't use the scripting aspects of it, but it provided value. The Apple ecosystem didn't bother me too much, but it was a pain, and I was doing more and more work on my Windows machine and going to my phone to add/update tasks was creating friction.
They came out with OmniFocus web, which would allow me to solve the issue... but it's too damn expensive. I've already spent ~$175 for licenses to OmniFocus for Mac and iOS, now you're asking for $50/year on top of that.
The competitors are hungry in this space, and Todoist offered more for less. I switched to their premium plan, which is cheaper than OmniFocus web itself, let alone the full subscription and includes clients for everything, plus a web-only client as a last resort.
The same pattern holds true for the rest of their software lineup. I own most of it except OmniPlan.
TL;DR. Omni isn't providing value compared to its (paid) competitors, to say nothing of FOSS.
As a user: I see some software I might be interested in trying. I have to go to generally some nameless, faceless group to get them to buy it. I open a ticket, or get an inquiry started, and they start asking boilerplate- do we have similar tools already, what is the license, etc. If we get past this phase, there is typically some kind of legal review. Maybe a few weeks later we can actually have this on our machine in some form.
From a company perspective: A user wants to buy yet another piece of software that we have to manage and keep track of. We will have yearly contract renewals to deal with most likely, understanding and holding them to their support model, ensuring they don't phone home, ensuring we are in compliance with our number of licenses, etc- this is all quite a bit of continued work. Also- how do we package this software and get it out to our users- there is a process for that as well.
With FOSS, we have none of these problems aside from the potential phone home problem, which isn't really a problem, because we restrict by default. It's just a much more pain-free process.
I think the word you are looking for is "greed".
If I pay for a book, I feel it cost some effort to produce it physically, print it, bind it, ship it. I cannot force myself to pay for an e-book, which is a pdf copied at no extra cost. Same for digital music and software or any other digital "good" or subscription. I sympathise with the creators, if they will produce something that does not scale, I will pay them for it. Otherwise, sorry, but not my job to figure out their business models.
They seem to have 'figured out' their business model already, and it involves each person copying the PDF, paying a nominal fee.
FWIW
I've argued elsewhere on HN, that the reward for building an automated system should be, pay for building the system. In America at least, we consider the entire lifetime output of said system to belong to the builder. That is unsustainable. Imagine a future where everything is automated. There will be no need for workers, and not much further development. The economy becomes a static owner-vs-unemployed deal, and how can that survive?
And even if some folks do decide to go the 'boutique' route and hand-make something, there is always another person who will go the automated route and cut their prices by 90%. Free market after all.
It will be upsetting for sure. Lots of entrenched interests in renting automation at high rates. Maybe have to do it in a phased approach - VAT or some such?
It’s absolutely immoral to me that you see a long chain of work (research, writing, editing, marketing, printing) and judge it solely on its last component (printing). There are so many physical goods where the final piece is just a small portion of the final cost.
Everything is an exercise in amortization. You seem happy to amortize the obvious parts (printing, binding, stocking, delivering), but not the behind the behind the scenes parts (writing, editing, marketing). That's a crappy distinction.
I never fully understood why we do not have the "a good tool saves me x hours, and makes me happy while doing my work so I should pay for it" culture. SW engineers are pretty well paid and companies themselves have decent margins so this penny pinching tendency is upsetting.