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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

It’s just a money grab for anyone who will fall for it.

100 years is long enough that the consequences of failure are nil. Nobody who is pushing this program will be alive to deal with any fallout.

It reminds me of the subtle attitude of people making poor engineering decisions because they’ll be long gone by the time payment comes due.

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Almost all ‘lifetime subs’ are scams; a company has to be massive to support it and if it doesn’t work out for smaller companies, the consequences don’t matter anyway.

I took a lifetime VPN sub. It always puzzled me why they'd do that, what with the operational cost. It lasted a bit over 10y, which is still a good deal, but not lifetime.

Out of curiosity… does their ULA specify to whom/what “lifetime” refers?

I'm not sure, but they ended up closing shop.

The underlying answer is that the cost to provide service to an average VPN user is essentially zero

It is a lifetime sub! Lifetime of said company

Most companies don't have to go bust to get around lifetime subs, just release a new separate app version or service.

It doesn't actually have to be lifetime to be well worth it, though. For services with recurring fees there's obviously a break-even point that's simple to calculate. And often you can expect that recurring fee will increase at some point, so that break-even point will often come sooner than expected.

I bought an Emby Premier subscription 8 years ago for $120. You can also pay yearly at $55 dollars. So even if it's not _actually_ a "lifetime" it's been well worth it and pays for itself in a little over two years.

What seems to happen is the company will offer a "new" product that differs enough to justify demanding a whole new subscription

Anything I've paid lifetime subs for has later changed their terms and dropped out of the deal

Does failing after 10 years count as a failure? Cause living for the next 10 years is not really that difficult, and the relevant people will still likely be around.

Sure, the offer might as well be for 90 years, or even 50 years without much practical difference, but if it was a bit more honest and said "50 years", would you still call it a money grab?

The fact remains that this will be honored for as long as there are people interested in honoring it. This surely has some value, right?

Yeah, this is really, really, really dumb. There is no guarantee the USA will be around in 100 years (and honestly right now I wouldn't bet on the "staying around" side), let alone WordPress.

I think it should be illegal for companies to make any sort of guarantee like this longer than some specified timespan, backed up by some level of "corporate actuarial analysis" around how likely the company is to exist at the end of the term. Bankruptcies happen all the time and they essentially wipe out the claims of customers.

It is virtually guaranteed no one will use domain names or web browsers or blogs or websites in 100 years.

What would they use?

It will likely exist as a niche thing, but it will be abstracted into an easy-to-use service, much like social media is today.

Those easy to use services use domains and web browsers lol.

Probably a direct brain interface that knows the information the user wants to see without them having to do archaic things like “search” for it.

There are technologies today that have a good chance of making traditional domain names obsolete. IPFS Unstoppable Domains for example.

Domain names have existed for about 50 years [1], much longer than web browsers or blogs, so them being around for another 100 doesn't seem like a stretch. But I would agree that their relevance will diminish further.

1: https://web.archive.org/web/20180914182353/https://www.inter...

I'd bet that about almost any tech thing except DNS, Linux, the web, and maybe 14nm.

A money grab from the people of WordPress? The company that has probably done the most for the development of the web? I find it hard to see it that way.

> The company that has probably done the most for the development of the web?

Lol, excuse me?

I know WP is big but take a moment to reflect on that statement, WP is far from that.

they have atleast ensured a great many people are dealing with regularly patching crap, and taking care of fallout, from what is arguably one of the most insecure piles of garbage EVER WRITTEN

This feels like bordering on flamebait

I think this is supposed to be sarcastic

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