But to push back, if you’re talking about a 5 minute task, that you’re using once every few months, a free trial timed the way you are asking, might mean you never end up needing to purchase a license. I understand that that is useful for you, but that isn’t exactly good for someone trying to sell a piece of software. (I understand you also gave usage based examples, but even in those scenarios (which require additional work to code for trial versions, versus a pure time-lock), there is always going to be someone who says “5 saves isn’t enough” or whatever the metric is).

> The idea that, as a consumer, I'm going to sit down and fully evaluate a piece of software over the course of 7/14/30 consecutive days to then make a purchasing decision is bizarre.

Maybe it’s my past life as a software reviewer (and current life as someone frequently asked about my assessment/opinion on apps), but for consumer software (SaaS, especially for business like what OP article is about, I think is different), I really don’t think this is that bizarre.

To me, a trial is really instructive because if I’m finding myself opening or using an app frequently during the trial, that’s a good indicator I’ll get value out of the application. Similarly, if I did a trial in January for one task, then came back to do that same task again in May and the trial is expired, it’s a good way for me to evaluate if it makes sense for me to buy a license or not. There are some programs I use two or three times a year that I purchase because it is useful enough for that one task, but there are others that I use infrequently enough to try to seek out other options. A time-based trial, for me, is a good forcing function to determine if I’m actually going to use the program.