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Comment by kyrylo | Hacker News Reader

> Look at all the one off payment products that involve code, they're all dead.

Could you share some examples? I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

I really went all-in with the ONCE philosophy because it resonated with me deeply. It felt more like a passion project than cold business strategy.

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I think all of the boilerplate projects you can find.

Are ONCE projects getting updates? We will find a year or two?

Your model is a subscription, we just don’t get to know when you decide to have a new major version and plan pricing / spend as a result.

ONCE projects do get occasional updates. I don’t use boilerplate projects much, so I can’t speak to them.

My model isn’t a subscription. Think about it like buying rice. You might buy it every week, but that doesn’t mean you’re “subscribed” to rice.

Even if I release a new major version, you’re free not to update. And if it’s a major version, it’s fair to expect it to be paid. After all, major updates usually bring significant improvements. For example, if you played the original DOOM, you had to pay for DOOM 2 too, even though they run on the same engine.

There are so many people buying rice that's not hard for rice producers to forecast how many thousands of tons of rice they have to grow each year. And not many people look at how much they spend for rice year long. For the single box, yes, they do notice. So it's not a subscription but it looks like it is, at least from the point of view of the seller.

Yes but I don't rely on rice I bought a year ago or DOOM as a core component of my business. Trying to work around a business model (subscription saas) requires that you understand what people are buying, and often, especially with you vendors, that is a financial alignment between the two.

If you bought DaVinci Resolve several years ago, you're still able to update to 20.<whatever> and use the same licence key.

Granted they're not interested in taking 225 quid off you for a software licence, they're interested in taking 22 grand off Netflix for a complete edit desk.

That's a fair point. In my case, though, I'm a solo dev without a hardware ecosystem, so major versions help sustain development without forcing subscriptions. What do you think about models like that for indie projects?

The problem with ONCE is that software is never finished. This is why most ONCE software that is still available today is charging a one off licensing fee + update fee (e.g. charge yearly for major updates or 10% of the one off fee per year). This is sustainable, but your model isn't. You will notice down the road in 2-4 years that it's no fun to work for free for users that expect an update because it requires patching or there are breaking changes.

That’s a fair concern, but I see it differently. Software can reach a point of maturity - not “dead” just done. That’s the whole philosophy behind ONCE: build something great, maintain it responsibly, and stop when it’s complete.

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