Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a TextExpander user since 2010. I have been buying "major upgrades" as they came out, without caring much for the features.

I would be very happy to switch to subscription-based pricing. I think we should finally abandon the idea that software can be "purchased" once and used forever. It's unrealistic. Developers need money to fix bugs and adapt the software to new operating systems and environments. Users will not keep the current OS version forever. And yet we still play that silly game where developers have to announce "major features" in order to justify getting some money once every several years.

There are several essential utilities that I'd gladly pay a subscription fee for. I don't want new features, I just want the software to be regularly polished, I want bugs to be fixed and I want it to work with newer OS versions.

That said, I consider $48/year to be too high a price. I'd be willing to pay $20/year for TextExpander. So for now I'm not subscribing, and I'll see what happens. If the price doesn't come down, I'll have to look for other solutions.

> think we should finally abandon the idea that software can be "purchased" once and used forever.

I certainly hope not. If I as a consumer want to use a certain software version locally then I should have that right. Why should I pay for developers to make features that I don't need / want?

> I think we should finally abandon the idea that software can be "purchased" once and used forever.

I've been using Emacs, etc. since the 90s without having to subscribe to them. There is an enormous amount of software, both Free and proprietary, that you can still purchase once and use as long as you care to.

> That said, I consider $48/year to be too high a price. I'd be willing to pay $20/year for TextExpander.

This debacle reminded me that I'd once paid $5 for a license to aText. I dusted it off and found that 1) it's still supported and updated, and 2) it covers 100% of my TextExpander use cases. $48/year is astronomically high when the competition is $5/always.

Well, some people want to make a living writing software. Which is fine. Taking your example: as an Emacs user since roughly 1993 I understand two things: a) nobody makes a living developing Emacs, b) Emacs could use a lot more polish.

You can't make a living selling something once for $5 and never charging people again. It's just not sustainable.

I totally get that, but on the other hand we don't owe them that living. When I negotiate salary, I don't present a would-be employer with a list of bills and a desired profit margin. Instead, I negotiate based on the going rate for the role I'll be filling. Software vendors similarly don't have the privilege of saying "we need $X per year, divided by Y expected licenses, so you guys need to pony up $X/Y+profit."

I agree with exactly what you say except for the price. At $24/year there's just no room to stay in business. Even just one support request would put you in the negative for that customer. Nevermind the server costs, payment processing fees, you're barely leaving anything on the table unless the company can achieve massive economies of scale. Again I agree with everything but price, I just can't see the. Staying in business at a lower price point...

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