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Comment by mjburgess | Hacker News Reader

Subscriptions are much safer pricing models. You want apps, software etc. to be sold by subscription.

Why? Most businesses are not MS/etc. which have resilient multiple income streams. Many single-app companies either go under, or stop selling that app and so no longer update or support it.

A subscription model ensures that the developer always has a reliable app-specific income stream to justify investment & support.

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A subscription model also flips ownership. You're only ever renting and the owner can take it back at any time (often at their discretion).

Jetbrain's model is a good middle ground - you get perpetual access to versions released while your sub was active.

This was the “old” subscription model for desktop software. It’s the model most software with yearly updates was sold under (MS Office, Jira, etc, etc) and was basically a yearly subscription (to get access to new versions) except that it guaranteed the developer would be creating yearly releases to make it worth adopting newer versions, while the “current” subscription model doesn’t particularly encourage a company to continue innovating and developing to ensure their products don’t stagnate. The only problem with the old “yearly release w/ lifetime per-version” licensing is that it didn’t encourage refactoring, under-the-hood improvements, etc and encouraged needless churn with UI, etc as “progress for the sake of progress” to make it more appealing to upgrade on a yearly basis.

Yep, I’ve served my years as a dev under that model too :)

Correction: You get perpetual access to the oldest version released during your 1 year subscription period.

My JB subscriptions expire at the end of this month, if I don't re-up, I have to downgrade to 2020.1 versions and forego all the improvements and bugfixes in 2020.2 and 2020.3 (2020.3 is the latest release, which I'm currently using).

Thanks, I didn’t realise that. They say you get 2020.2.x releases, so you’d hope fixes for show stopping bugs would be back ported. Probably nothing smaller though, which is a shame.

It's such a weird system. The common logic for subscriptions is that you are paying for ongoing maintenance and updates (which is absolutely fair vs a one-off purchase). But if my active subscription helped fund those improvements, I think I should be entitled to continue using them after my sub expires.

It's a good thing their products are top notch.

I guess they do it to discourage on/off subscriptions, which I get. Would be better if they gave a bonus for unbroken subscription instead.

Qt is also licensed via LGPL

But for how much longer will new versions be released? Since they own all copyrights to the software, it's relatively easy to drop LGPL at any point on newer releases.

Sure, if they don’t mind Qt automatically being relicensing under BSD

“The little known KDE Free Qt Foundation makes sure that Qt stays free and open-source. It guarantees that all Qt modules currently licensed under LGPLv3 must continue to be available under LGPLv3 in the future. This covers all modules from Qt Essentials and many add-on modules. If The Qt Company discontinued the FOSS version of Qt, the Foundation would have the right to make Qt available under the BSD license. This is a very powerful protection of free and open-source Qt.“

https://www.embeddeduse.com/2019/12/21/safe-guarding-the-lgp...

https://dot.kde.org/2016/01/13/qt-guaranteed-stay-free-and-o...

The ownership relationship doesn't change. Non- subscription licenses can be revoked/terminated too.

How?

Through legal means.

That seems very rare/special case and unlikely. Also it doesn't seem like it would hold water in court.

> You want apps, software etc. to be sold by subscription.

I want options. Don't tell me what I want.

There's a difference between "telling you what you want", and the sense here. In this case it just means, "it's in your interest"; as in, "you want to see this!".

In any case, "options" sounds good, but it is precisely this short-term economic logic I am claiming many misperceive as being in their interest.

There are many instances of apps (, libraries, etc.) simply disappearing and being frozen in old versions because of no revenue stream against them.

You may "want" something quite different 2yr after you've invested a massive amount in using Qt, only for there to be no future versions and your app becomes uncompetitive with others which are using increasingly modern libraries.

It's not in my interest if it costs me more and makes future planning more difficult.

The software subscription business is essentially a huge price hike masked by paying in installments.

>simply disappearing and being frozen in old versions because of no revenue stream against them.

It means that the new features in version X were not good enough to entice new buys or upgrades.

Subscription model is great - for the software companies. It's not a good model for consumers.

The current subscription model will end up being just like Fifa or Madden games, the same thing every year with minor changes because consumers are locked-in and have no alternative.

Yes, you really want to be at the mercy of some set of third parties, each one capable of bringing your business down. The more, the better.

None of them will ever abuse that dependency to take all of your profit. No, sir.

Safer for investors that is. Which are as likely to bring the business o an end by optimizations and acquisitions as running out of money is.

That's insane. Back in the day you bought Photoshop (a tool) and could use it forever. You bought a tool you could use.

Now you need a subscription to keep using your tool? You need permanent Internet access, to keep using your tool? You need t keep paying to access you files?

This is why Affinity Photo will probably end up taking more and more market share away from Adobe's products.

You never bought Photoshop. You licensed it. They're changing the way the licence works, is all.

If you don't like it, keep using your old version under the old licence.

This is false. You are a victim of a propaganda campaign that seeks to undermine the correct legal definitions.

In most jurisdictions, buying a copy of Photoshop is the purchase of a good.

> In most jurisdictions, buying a copy of Photoshop is the purchase of a good.

This may be how you wish things were, but not how they actually are.

Read any software licence and see what you are actually getting for your money.

Old version of Photoshop (3.0, 4.0, ... CS5 up to CS6) gave you a license key you could sell. It didn't include a time limit. It was yours and you could sell it or use it forever. That's gone.

You can try to find old licenses for CS6, sure, but at some point, but it's a very different purchase and licensing system from what they have now.

Exactly a licence key - which you could transfer to someone else. You didn't own the software. You owned a licence to use it.

That's false. When one purchases a copy of a (book|software|video), one then owns that good.

A typical proprietary software licence text is irrelevant when it comes to terms of ownership, transfer of ownership, use of the good etc. as the law applies and determines "how [things] actually are". A contract, let alone a unilaterally dictated licence text, is legally unable to take away certain rights the consumer enjoys.

Personally I switched to the GIMP. I'm kind of proud I haven't felt the need to reinstall PS yet

It's taken like 15 years too long, but GIMP finally has 16-bit and 32-bit linear light color channel support. GIMP is pretty sweet.

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