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Comment by Brian_K_White | Hacker News Reader

If I sold furniture, the designs and manufacturing processes and materials usage all undergo continuous iteration, yet when I sell you your chair, you don't have to keep paying me forever to keep using it.

Yes, you also don't get updates to it.

That is actually perfectly fine for countless bits of software.

I have 30 year old software, and it still does it's original job just fine, if I happen to be ok with all it's original limitations. It's too late to try to say that is an insane idea, since, I already have it in my hands to prove that it's possible.

And then there is media. Every provider wants to force everyone onto the perpetual rent, nothing to leave to your kids, model for books/music/video, not just software. What's the "it blows my mind" excuse there?

It does not blow my mind at all that there are people on HN trying to excuse and justify this rent-life hell they've created for everyone else. It is the most obvious thing in the world.

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No one is going to use an unpatched bug in your chair to rob your house.

What a stunning observation that I totally hadn't considered. /s

This is an overused excuse that does not actually justify nearly as much as what it's used for.

Also, online services suffer leaks and outtages and 3-letter/police pressure that I have no control or knowledge of that self owned self hosted software does not.

None of the excuses for rent hell are actually valid. They are just the excuses used to sell the idea.

The fact that services have their own problems does not mean there is no such thing as a valid service, or that the security update issue is not a real thing, it just means that this security update issue is just a thing like a lot of other things, that only really necessarily applies in certain cases, and doesn't apply everywhere, and doesn't override all other concerns, and there are other equally valid issues that are addressed by the opposite sort of model. Ie, it's nothing special and does not excuse or trump anything else.

No, but if my dehumidifier model causes fires it will be recalled and I'll get my money back to buy a new one.

Although, I think some companies use recalls in a dark pattern, specifically baby product companies.

So you're talking about an unusually serious flaw and almost certainly for some bounded period of time--and assuming the purchasers even learns of the recall. Automobiles aside, I don't think in my 60+ years I have ever been aware of a recall on a product I purchased.

That may be the case, but a lot of people do pay attention to recalls. Whether a majority, plurality, or minority of the population I have no idea, but folks in my social circle do search for recalls when purchasing used.

It's surely not just a minority but a very small minority if you're not counting the recalls that either end up in the news or go through the trouble of informing customers.

With respect, are you based in the US?

The EU's Safety Gate programme documents safety recalls all the time, and it's common to get an email (for bigger purchases) or see recall notices at the entrance or checkouts at retailers. Retailers of safety-critical products (medical equipment, lifejackets, climbing gear, etc) will often insist on a phone number or email address in case of recall.

https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/

I'm curious now, can you expand on dark recall patterns?

Baby stuff companies make a lot of money selling new items and nothing from used items. Their things are always on the recall posters at stores. Are they all super dangerous? Or do they recall things that are a few years old so that the used items shouldn't be sold? I imagine the cost of a recall of something that has been discarded or put in the closet is pretty low.

Incidentally, perhaps you can eventually be paid back for your stroller or crib if you do keep the receipt and watch the lists.

Thrift stores will have to check recall lists of donated items and discard the ones that are recalled, or there might be some legal exposure.

Nobody is going to pay for an unpatched bug in a chair in the first place, and then be happy when they're asked to pay more to fix it.

However, if your chair allows someone to rob your house, in most jurisdictions, the manufacturer will face enormous liability. Maybe we should introduce that expectation for software developers, too.

Where does it end? I'm liable for my client's laziness in not upgrading to a patched version?

you are liable for producing shit in the first place. If chairs killed people, ikea would not get away with 'well, they didnt pay us subscribrion to get a new safe version'

If spftware industry is a joke and can't sort out it's own mess, its on us, not the consumer

This just reads to me that you don't want to have to accept any liability for the work you produce. Why shouldn't you be liable for the initial flawed software that you sold to an unsuspecting buyer? Why should you be able to suddenly shift liability onto your customer by releasing a patch?

In the United States, the landmark product liability case was Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co.. In the majority decision, one of the judges wrote:

> Even if there is no negligence, however, public policy demands that responsibility be fixed wherever it will most effectively reduce the hazards to life and health inherent in defective products that reach the market. It is evident that the manufacturer can anticipate some hazards and guard against the recurrence of others, as the public cannot. Those who suffer injury from defective products are unprepared to meet its consequences. The cost of an injury and the loss of time or health may be an overwhelming misfortune to the person injured, and a needless one, for the risk of injury can be insured by the manufacturer and distributed among the public as a cost of doing business. It is to the public interest to discourage the marketing of products having defects that are a menace to the public. If such products nevertheless find their way into the market it is to the public interest to place the responsibility for whatever injury they may cause upon the manufacturer, who, even if he is not negligent in the manufacture of the product, is responsible for its reaching the market. However intermittently such injuries may occur and however haphazardly they may strike, the risk of their occurrence is a constant risk and a general one. Against such a risk there should be general and constant protection and the manufacturer is best situated to afford such protection.

There are some things to unpack here.

First, as a software developer, you are supposedly the expert and are in a far better position to evaluate your software and its potential hazards. Your customers are neither required to be experts in your software or how it might harm them, and realistically have no way to properly assess it no matter their skill level, so the responsibility falls on you.

Second, it is in the public interest to dissuade software developers from releasing faulty, broken, dangerous, etc software to the public. If a law which makes you responsible for the results of your software's failing makes you think twice about selling it, then that is a benefit to the public. If you aren't confident enough that you can accept the liability, why should your customers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escola_v._Coca-Cola_Bottling_C....

But very few physical consumer goods are designed to be robust to adversarial or malicious use, and there is no standard of liability for such failures. On the other hand, often in these discussions, people advocate for such a standard for software products.

Consider the example of a music player that was mentioned in another comment upstream in this thread. Suppose a company sells music player software that turns out to have a RCE vulnerability when run on a maliciously crafted .mp3 file. Should they be liable?

It's helpful to consider a physical product analogy: imagine the company sold a cassette player instead. Now, let's say that someone designs a malicious tape that is lined with noxious chemicals, which when played in the cassette player causes it to catch on fire and explode. Would anyone regard the cassette maker as liable if this caused someone to die or a house to burn down?

In the Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. case that you cite, a key phrase from the majority opinion is:

> Upon an examination of the record, the evidence appears sufficient to support a reasonable inference that the bottle here involved was not damaged by any extraneous force after delivery to the restaurant by defendant.

In other words, there was no 3rd party malicious use or manipulation of the bottle: it exploded during "normal" use. If the bottle had exploded because some 3rd party had deliberately weakened the bottle, or added extra pressure before giving it to the waitress, there's no way Coca-Cola would have been liable.

> It's helpful to consider a physical product analogy: imagine the company sold a cassette player instead. Now, let's say that someone designs a malicious tape that is lined with noxious chemicals, which when played in the cassette player causes it to catch on fire and explode. Would anyone regard the cassette maker as liable if this caused someone to die or a house to burn down?

With respect, a malicious tape lined with noxious chemicals is not analogous to a maliciously crafted .mp3 file for several reasons. First a tape lined with noxious chemicals is dangerous unto itself.

Second, it is not reasonably foreseeable that a tape deck would be used to play a chemically sabotaged tape. If there were millions of tapes in circulation that could cause a tape deck to self-combust, the manufacturer would be (at least partly) liable for that foreseeable outcome. They would be required to take steps to ameliorate that possible outcome.

It is now reasonably foreseeable that software designed to open arbitrary files may be subject to a maliciously crafted attack.

Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen?

Should medicine manufacturers be liable if someone circumvents their tamper-proof seals and laces them with a poison?

Should berry growers be liable if someone inserts needles into foods that are sold at supermarkets?

All of these are crimes that are either widespread or famous from media scares that happened in the past, and thus foreseeable going ahead, but I think liability would still be limited because the resulting harms are caused by a 3rd party criminal act.

> Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen?

This is an interesting hypothetical, but I don't see the relevance.

> Should medicine manufacturers be liable if someone circumvents their tamper-proof seals and laces them with a poison?

Yes, and they are.

> Should berry growers be liable if someone inserts needles into foods that are sold at supermarkets?

The retailer should be, and is.

>> Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen?

> This is an interesting hypothetical, but I don't see the relevance

That's your willing ignorance, and on the 2nd point too.

With respect, I don't see the relevance because the additional emissions caused by removing a catalytic converter are an extremely minor harm to the occupant and others. If, for example, driving a car with a catalytic converter removed caused the vehicle to explode killing the occupants (or any other significant harm), then the manufacturer and retailer would absolutely be held responsible. Physical products are required to fail safely in foreseeable circumstances.

If by my second point, you're referring to circumventing the tamper-proof seal on medications, then maybe you'd like to expand? Manufacturers, retailers, and medical staff are (jointly) responsible for medications for their entire life cycle. A retailer who sells a poisoned medication is absolutely liable, as is the manufacturer who produced a fallible tamper-proof seal (which is worse than no seal at all).

Feel free to elaborate on why you think I'm wilfully ignorant.

If my unpatched chair breaks because of a manufacturing defect I’ll sue the company.

You would? That seems like an outsized reaction to a broken chair.

Small claims makes low dollar torts fairly straightforward.

Interesting, I wonder how often Small-claims gets used for software. At the same time:

@d13 What if the house magically changed shape so the chair couldn't be used any more in that house? Suddenly one day you'll need to sit on the floor and eat, until you had gotten new chairs, for the new shape of the house

Who would you sue (the house or the chair company or no one?)

Or instead, when the house changes shape randomly and whenever, what about paying the chair company for upgrading your chairs to match the new shape of the house (and you'd never have to cook and eat on the floor)

(It makes little sense, I think, to compare software with chairs and houses. Unless the houses are magical as per above)

You live in a fancy apartment building that has a lobby with a concierge. The building isn't going to give the concierge $100,000 and tell them, okay keep coming back for the rest of your life.

If the lobby of your building has a fancy chair in it, the furniture company isn't going to expect $10 a month forever to keep using it, and on the flip side, if the furniture turns out to be accidentally made of asbestos, it's the furniture company's responsibility to do something about that, regardless of the fact that you're not paying them every month.

Is there a version of the concierge that's a one time purchase? Probably not a good one? The fee your paying is for 1. continued incentive to continue doing a good job and 2. Training and improvements to the staff.

Is there a version of the chair that should be a recurring fee? Maybe if the chair company comes and swaps out the chair every month, but then you're not paying for the chair, you're paying for the chair service. Should the apartment building have the expectation that under a flat fee the fabric in the chair is going to get upgraded to fit new styles and tastes? No, that's never a expectation when you buy furniture. The only case where the manufacturer would be beholden to you would be if there is some gross defect in the product or if there was some negligence on their part that could lead to injury.

Realistically there's not going to be an issue where a chair lets robbers in, but if you bought a door lock for example, and the lock failed when someone tapped it, you're not SOL because your not paying a subscription to the lock maker, they're liable for their defective product.

There's absolutely cases where software should be a subscription model and there's absolutely cases where it shouldn't be.

I don't need any features that have been added to Adobe Premiere since 2013. I don't want or need updates--my copy of CS6 still works. I'm not getting a CC subscription.

If I needed software to help with accessibility compliance, I would absolutely be willing to pay a monthly fee because the standards change and information becomes out of date quickly. It would be an unreasonable expectation that a lump sum I paid in 2013 would still have my websites up to code today.

Forgive typos, on my phone.

> There's absolutely cases where software should be a subscription model and there's absolutely cases where it shouldn't be.

My thoughts on this:

1. How long would it take a team of 4 people to build this with just the features I need for a single user?

2. How much would it cost to contract a team to build that (ball bark)?

If it can be done on a single person's salary, I'm not paying a monthly subscription, no matter how inexpensive. I'm also not contracting that work either, but I might be tempted to compete with them if my employer let me (they won't).

Only certain things make sense as a subscription, and those are things that have an infinite (or practically infinite) cost to the consumer, thus they should have an amortized infinite cost.

I've always thought about this in relation to the cost to the company rather than the consumer. I appreciate that different perspective.

Do you think there's a case where something might have an infinite cost to the consumer but a finite cost to the company? Ie a solution to some recurring problem that, without the software or service the customer would endlessly pay for, but with the software or service would not incur the recurring cost--and in that situation, do you think it would be fair for the company to charge a recurring fee given that it's not costing them to continually develop it? So the customer is saving money compared to before they had the software but it's not supplementing a cost of development?

In those situations, it’s probably better to create an open source product that you sell support for. Customers that have the resources to build their own are also the customers who are willing to buy the closed source version until they can afford the time to replace it (auth0 cough). If you make it open source, those same companies would rather use what you’ve already built and probably contribute back to your project. The customers who could never afford to replace it will likely buy support for an open source version as well. Especially if you don’t advertise that it’s free (discourse) for a bit more work. You can also sell a hosted version for a subscription.

Now you’ve set yourself up for a community to grow: core devs you pay, customers that contribute code and help diagnose bugs, customers that pay you only for support, and customers that pay you to do everything.

I did this once, and the support-only customers were the most interesting. They helped locate latent race conditions that only appeared on underpowered hardware, but could happen on over-subscribed machines (like the hosted version), and so much more.

I never got any contributions on the code side, but one guy randomly took over responding to issues without being asked to. By the time I got to them, it would be ready to close or I would have enough information to address it immediately.

If you are going this route, just be aware that companies *will* eventually replace you with a home-grown solution. Even if it takes years. So ask yourself if you want to be the solution everyone goes to, you need an FOSS solution to give people. Otherwise, you’ll be replaced with the other ones, eventually.

IOW, if a company like auth0 were to have an open source server, they’d be killing it everywhere. Five or six years ago. By now, there’s enough free (as in free speech) solutions out there that they will probably never be the default solution, just one that you pay for for a little while until you figure out how or have the time to host your own.

Speaking from a consumer perspective, there should be definitely 2 options: 1. You pay for a subscription $X per month and get the newest updates. 2. You pay $Y*X once, but then you are left with the version which you bought in the first place.

Why can't software like a music player or playing podcast function perfectly fine w9thout updates for 10 years. We had same audio formats for 10 years, and same OS audio API.

Well, most software can run perfectly without updates, for example: You can still have a PC running on Windows XP.

Why you might need updates: 1. New functionality (if you need a particular feature that was not available before) 2. Security issues

this is my own ignorance, but have codecs not changed or gotten new features in the last 10 years?

This is my favourite model. Say you are an illustrator, you purchase photoshop once for 900$ and you update again when the features are compelling. Maybe every 5 years?

These are not industries where people make programmer wages. Combining all of the required software costs is very expensive. Subscriptions more closely match the model/needs of the producer, but they are often quite bad the consumer.

You then need to take assets from a 3rd party and use them in your work. Their files are for a version newer than yours and is not backwards compatible. Are you gonna upgrade then even if there’s no feature you require? This was the main issue with photoshop in my experience and a problem that has disappeared with the subscription model.

What you end up with though is a predatory sales team so that when the time comes to upgrade they want you to back pay the subscription :)

> you don't have to keep paying me forever to keep using it.

Your analogy is flawed. Rather, you will never indefinitely get the latest quality chair for free after buying it. Nor if tomorrow plastics are banned, they won't replace your chair with wood or metal for free either. And if the fabric wears, they won't replace it for free either.

So, why should software updates be free in a dynamic computing world?

That was covered, as it's obvious.

If you sold furniture you would also sell a heck of a lot more of it on very low, very long payment plans. Even more extreme with cars, resulting in leases that are essentially long term rentals or "subscriptions"

But you now own the product at the end of the term.

But RentACenter is only RentACenter, and unlike a lot of on-line services, I don't have to use them to furnish my house.

It's fine for the rental option to exist, the problem is only when no other option exists, and, increasingly, no other option exists.

Please don't waste our time pointing out how this is generalization and alternatives do exist technically for most things. It's obviously not 100% services, but the entire world of software is becoming more and more each day, worse today than yesterday, worse tomorrow than today, a choice between two opposite ends of a spectrum: 0% ownership in the form of services, and 100% ownership in the form of open source. Each of those are fine in various circumstances.

For many things, and increasing, no practical alternative to "RentACenter" software exists because in most cases an individual is not realistically free to do their own thing if they want to sell to customers and buy from vendors and interoperate with family and friends who all take the easy path and use all the major services, or even without interoperation issues the alternative option simply doesn't do the same job or doesn't exist. And the damning thing is that it used to exist, meaning the rental model is not a required aspect to produce the product to do the job.

And the margins for those furniture businesses are super duper tiny, whereas software margins are super duper not. Ironically, this is why they hawk monthly plans like the world is ending.

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