Re:Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
by jasonlotito on Sunday December 18, 2022 @11:48PM
(#34048616)
This is why I think JetBrains nailed the pricing with IntelliJ. You own what you buy, and can use it forever. You pay for upgrades. That's it.
Re:Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
by skelpmargyar on Monday December 19, 2022 @03:49AM
(#34049921)
Well, it makes them no more money from me. My maximum value has been extracted. Whether that's a solid business plan or not is not my argument. I'm saying that if I paid for something I don't expect any changes at all. If good changes happen, great. If bad changes happen, I should be able to decide if I can retain the product that I paid for. Whether the changes are free or not is not important because changing anything at all would be make the thing a new unique product. I just want the choice to keep it the same, something subscriptions don't offer. Because, well, that's what a subscription service means. But if I bought a newspaper subscription, I wouldn't expect them to fix a typo after they already delivered a newspaper. Typos happen, bugs happen, I don't buy a product expecting perfection. I expect to get to use the product I paid for, for the time agreed upon.
What do you mean by this exactly? There are always new customers to sell to, so of course you can make money by updating your product.
Will the buyer continue to receive free software updates forever? No, probably not. Eventually they may have to pay an upgrade fee. But the great part about upgrade fees compared to subscription is that the choice and timing of whether or not to upgrade is in the buyer's hands. Whereas with a subscription, it's a forced update, with the timing determined by the software developer, not the buyer. You pay yearly, or the software stops working now.