Is there some sort of middle ground? Say, minimum purchase cost is the same price as six months, but it keeps on working afterwards sans updates. When the dev realizes that such a tool is only 80% effective unless it is totally updated, they can subscribe.
So there's two reasons:
1. The only way to do that continuous upkeep of the rendering engine that I have found to be sustainable is with a subscription.
2. I definitely don't want to be responsible for people using years-old versions of Chromium.
If you happen to work in such an environment you have vastly different considerations from the other 99% of developers building websites and apps on the public facing web.
Sounds like a bit of a hassle on the logistics/release engineering side, though. That would need to be handled with some care and planning.
[0] Which I'll admit I don't 100% buy, but I'd love for a security expert to weigh in.
By design, you'll have users spread across any number of versions. And you have to decide how far back you're going to issue updates. And instead of having nice in-app updates and a policy of "just upgrade to the latest version", you have a system that's complicated for you and your users. And you have to decide if you're okay letting users use (by design) releases with issues that have long been fixed.
I can see how Adobe and Jetbrains have the manpower to do it, but a solo dev or a small team, you should spend your time building the dang product rather than appeasing people who don't think your product is worth $9/mo.
I've heard plenty of arguments on the 'financial tools to manage them are bad' (forget about them, hard to cancel) but few against 'paying money proportional to how much I use the product'. As a general concept that seems reasonable to me - if you use a product for 10 years, it's fair to pay more than somebody who uses it for a couple of months.
In a world where finance improves (more subs via Apple Pay et al, more banks like Revolut that show & allow unilaterally blocking any given recurring charge) would you still avoid them?
- It's hard to convince my boss to create a subscription.
- I don't want to become hostage to monthly payments - if I don't pay one month my whole workflow is messed over, so I have to continue (vs. otherwise I can slowly trade it out of my workflow, and/or look for alternatives)
- Its hard for me to mentally grok how much I am paying monthly on subscriptions.
- I never cancel, because inertia.
- I am not sure if this is something that justifies a monthly subscription, and two weeks is too little time for me to invest in changing my workflow to accommodate it.
- I hate subscriptions (this is an emotional thing, so you could tell me to get a shrink. But I suspect I am not the only one).