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Comment by darkhorse13 | Hacker News Reader

Slightly unrelated maybe, but I'm really hoping that the https://once.com model would take off. That would be the change I would want to see in the software world. It's more simpler to understand than governance, public interest, etc. Just pay once and own the software. I really don't think software is that deep or has many philosophical implications.

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But isn't that out of sync with reality? If I have to maintain software and put in more hours but only get paid once, I have to grow and grow and grow to keep getting paid. I'm actually developing a screen recording app for macos that's gonna be paid once, but will only have updates for a year. You can use it until apple changes APIs and whatever, but otherwise it wouldn't be a sustainable business model for me.

I think before we talk about being only paid once for software (which isn't a finished product like a brick anyway) we need to figure that out.

No I totally hear you, I don't even practice what I preach because I have a subscription-based side-project: https://forms.md

I guess I would like to see someone make the Once model work to great success. I don't know how you would deal with updates and stuff, but that's what I meant. One "simple" solution is just charging the LTV (or something that's close to it) as the one-time price.

This was solved before subscriptions took over everything by having to pay for new major versions. You pay once and have a limited duration of updates, after that you stick with the current version or pay again for the upgrade.

The benefit of doing it this way was that the user had a choice in upgrading which aligned incentives between users and developers. The developer had to deliver tangible improvements in order to keep payments from existing users coming. These days they change the color scheme every six months, remove features, change the UI for no dicernable reason and label the whole changelog "Various changes and bug fixes" when the product is clearly a mature product that should be in maintenance mode with no significant changes required.

then there's no money for actual maintenance beyond that say a year.

Which is fine.

And also drives user-centric innovation. If I buy your app and you release a new major version, you have to convince me to buy it again. Which means putting in features I'd need as a user, not just the ones that look good on shareholder meetings.

Which is why Once.com only offers free updates for a year

Yeah the "update for a year"/major version thing is the only way it can work. But only if there are no ongoing costs. I'm working on something like that: https://easyscreencap.com/ for the very reason that I don't see that I need to pay for such a thing monthly. However: the "updates for a year" vs yearly subscription difference feels so minimal at times tbh.

I mean, that used to just be how software was sold and it seemed to work then

Hell, you used to pay a dollar for Android games and you just had the game

The "once model" is just classic computing and it is alive and well. Most of the highest quality software work on the pay once model, and generally it's very affordable.

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