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Comment by dwohnitmok | Hacker News Reader

Oh man. If this lobste.rs comment is correct about the subscription terms then this feels like a really hard pill to swallow: https://lobste.rs/s/ykq7ym/rethinking_database_programming#c...

Still might be viable, but would be tricky to sell.

> SUBSCRIPTION TERMS

> This license is subscription-based and will remain valid only for the duration of your active subscription. Upon expiration or termination of your subscription:

> a) Your rights to use the Software will cease; b) You must uninstall and stop using the Software; and c) You may lose access to any data or content created with or stored in the Software.

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On the other hand, norms in software right now are that suckers build and maintain software for free + "the love of the game should be enough for anyone", so it's shocking when people break the norm.

That's not the norm that's being broken here. Most DB technologies provide a "pay for updates, if you stop paying you keep the last version you paid for" model. This is how Oracle prices its DB tech, this is how jOOQ is priced (which is probably the closest thing to Acadia), this is how MS prices its DB tech etc.

The responses to the pricing aspect of this announcement around the web disagree.

I'm not saying you can't find paid software, especially from Oracle and Microsoft, but there's a different expectation for "just-a-guy announcing his project on twitter".

You can see a similar mentality regarding Elm in general where the approachability of one guy had people in some sort of parasocial entitlement to the project that you wouldn't see if, for example, it were Google or an unknown who built Elm.

> The responses to the pricing aspect of this announcement around the web disagree.

Which responses are you thinking of?

I mean, it's the same for - say - Photoshop?

No, not at least for Photoshop. If you have the subscription version and fail to pay it downgrades you to the free version which has more limited editing capacity but still has read capacities.

More broadly I think the only subscription products most software developers are used to where access to data is revoked is cloud infra. Most software stuff follows models like Jetbrains (where e.g. you pay for updates but keep the oldest version). E.g. this is how things like SQL Server or other paid DB technologies work, where you effectively are subscribing to yearly updates, but get to keep the current version if you stop paying the subscription fee.

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