That is true, but nowadays most paid projects end up being perpetual subscriptions. Which I kind of get, as on-going maintenance still costs, but it used to be that you paid for a tool once and only paid again if you wanted/needed an updated version. I'd gladly pay $15-$60 for a tool once (and again if I needed an update) but $10-$15 per month for 20 different things (that I will only use occasionally) is just out of reach for me financially and I live in a "rich" first-world country.

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PaulHoule 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Working for a SaaS company is the greatest thing if you are a software developer who doesn't care about business: even if you don't care about business the business cares about you!

There was an article in Byte magazine circa 1983 describing this dilemma: you release a successful 1.0 of a product, get a pulse of money, hold back some of it to develop 2.0, N months later version 2.0 competes with not only your competitors but with 1.0 in the minds of your most satisfied customers. Now if you're planning for N months and it is really N+M they have to scramble for money to pay your paycheck or release the product before it is ready or both. If you're laid off you could be one of the lucky ones because working under those conditions can be a living hell.

I'm glad I'm working on a service because even if a project I am working on is critical to acquiring and retaining customers it's not an automatic crisis that a project is a little late.

In the last 10 years or so SaaS seems like an investor-driven fad driven by the ease of putting a valuation on a consistent cashflow, but I think it is more basic than that.

That's not to say that the 'anti-consumer' concerns aren't real. Also with generative AI we are seeing that some things need to account for the resources they use. In the 2010s I was looking at a family of proto-AI businesses where my business partner and I were struggling with pricing, like we could not set an $X/month price such that (i) some users might not cost 10$X or 100$X a month to serve and (ii) that $X doesn't exceed the value the subscriber would get from the service for many users thus you don't make the sale. Yet we also liked the idea of stable revenue and boy all the software biz people and investors we talked to couldn't see past the "S, M, L, XL" subscription model.

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pjmlp 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

How do you imagine it used to be when everything was commercial?

On the plus side, at least there wasn't that many magpie development, and rewrites just because.

Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

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senko 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

If you're trying to make people cheer for the pirates, you're succeeding.

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pjmlp 2 days ago | parent [-]

Some people will never pay, even if it was one euro, single payment.

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direwolf20 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah. Because they're 14 and don't have a credit card, or they don't have any money, or the price is completely unaffordable (looking at you, IDA) or they hate your software and wish your company would DIAF but are forced to use it for various reasons anyway.

You might as well be nice to the people who will give you money, so that they'll give you money. Being hostile to people who are trying to give you money is rarely a winning business strategy.

	▲	pjmlp 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		All good reasons, except when it comes from people that can afford Apple, feel entitled to get gratis stuff, never pay anything else, and then come to complain on HN that another project died.

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red_admiral 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Programs were distributed on stacks of diskettes, towards the end of that era on CD-ROMs. There was no licence server to phone home to on the internet.

You bought Borland C++ compiler, installed it and used it - you were free to buy the next version when it came out or not.

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pjmlp 2 days ago | parent [-]

There are plenty of programs where you can still do that, that gladly accept one time license payment.

However think on your own salary and how many copies you need to sell, at what price, per month, to receive the same monetary amount after taxes.

Add to it, the amount of new user acquisitions per month, to keep a sustainable salary level.

	▲	trinix912 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You’re right about that. But now put the users in the equation. If you’re making and marketing a B2B tool, it’s fine. But for a B2C tool, that tool will have to be so good that people will be willing to keep paying an ongoing subscription. That means that you’re now also competing against other cheaper alternatives (OSS) and people’s other life expenses (including other subscriptions). It depends on the niche you’re targeting but I’d go as far as to say it might sometimes be better to sell 100 copies at once every now and then, than get 5-10 people who are willing to subscribe and might all cancel their subscriptions a few months later when some other subscription-based tool shows up. For most people it’s easier to justify a one-time $10 purchase than locking in a $10 monthly subscription. But I agree that there’s no universal solution and it depends on what tool you’re making and in what niche.

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classified 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

I'm not so sure. If they can't pay for a one-time purchase, they won't be able to afford a subscription. Subscriptions are always more expensive in the end, that's why they exist in the first place. I don't see how people not using the software while still not becoming customers is a fix to anything.

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pjmlp 2 days ago | parent [-]

Subscriptions look cheaper for many folks.

As for being able to afford them, yes it cuts people out, many of whom would pirated anyway.

Digital stores, API keys, and SaaS seem to be doing alright

	▲	PaulHoule 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Subscriptions can be cheaper in some ways and more expensive than others. Adobe Creative Suite used to require a one time eye-watering payment and very few people could afford to keep it up to date, you might skip several upgrades before buying the next one if you did at all. CC's monthly payment makes it easy to enter. You are paying more in the long term than if you bought one version of it, but less than you'd pay if you kept your subscription up -- so somebody could make the case that it is more expensive than it used to be or less expensive than it used to be.

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latexr 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

Adobe tools are subscriptions and they get pirated all the time.

	▲	pjmlp 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		They do, as did Autocad with key locks, the point is to make it harder, as long as it runs locally, there is always a way.

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estimator7292 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"Rent-seeking is the only way to fix piracy" is an interesting take.

It seems to be going very well for video and music streaming services. Piracy is certainly nearly dead at this point and not at all at record-high levels.

	▲	pjmlp 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The sarcastic tone ignores that was much worse during Napster golden days.