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Comment by a254613e | Hacker News Reader

Besides being sick of subscriptions for every small thing, I'm not sure I understand the premise here:

"Pay to download or for other services: Not worth it; users can find the software somewhere else and they don't need your other services."

So users won't pay a one-time fee, but instead they will pay a subscription to get that one software they need? They won't "find the software somewhere else" if it's behind a subscription, but will do so if it's behind a single payment?

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The thing is that this solution scales better. If you had to pay all developers individually, that would not be worth it but with my solution, you have to pay only one.

Also, it doesn't have to be a subscription. The payment is 100% up to the developers that you pay, so they could sell a one time payment and register a lifetime subscription in this system for that.

If I understand correctly, you are not getting one piece of software. You get access to everything in their library, like a spotify subscription. You also choose which developer gets your $5 or whatever, so you retain the meritocratic infrastructure that a traditional marketplace provides.

Now that you mention it, the spotify subscription is actually very interesting here. A bundled subscription for all the software you use could make sense (though it would probably by 10-100x the cost of a spotify subscription).

However, OP's resource allocation model (each user determines which developer gets their payment) doesn't make sense to me. I think it would be better to prototype multiple resource allocation models in parallel and see which are most fair and sustainable over time.

next to nobody will pay 100x a spotify subscription for anything, no matter how great it is. Despite what buisness owners like to believe, most normal people in the first world have like $100 dollars a month total after food + rent + utilities with which to spend on any and all entertainment and luxuries. at best you could maybe charge like 60 dollars a month, like cable, but that would have to be an unbelievable deal with no alternative (not possible, its incredibly easy to make new software, so you'd constantly be undercut by startups and open source chipping away at your cataloge)

I could maaaaaybe see it working on iphone, a premium apps service, where they have a lot more control

SetApp is pretty much that (for Mac, I don't know if they also do Windows stuff). I've avoided it and instead bought a lot of software available in the bundle because I prefer to own the software when I can and when it makes sense.

Bundling of SaaS apps would be a great idea.

OAuth might one way to enable it. Instead of logging in via Google/Facebook/Apple you could login via "SaaSBundler", this would register you've used that product which could help allocate the distribution of funds. Might need some more work if you wanted to distribute based on time

It won't work.

It's nothing about what it actually does. If your business model:

1. Targets general people, rather than a very specific niche group 2. Requires users to carefully read a paragraph of text to understand the benefits

It just won't work. There is a reason that insurance salemans exist.

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