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I feel like subscriptions have generally made software quality worse. There was an argument that having to make paid upgrades to generate revenue to pay salaries put pressure on companies to change things that didn’t need changing, just to get that upgrade money, and subs reflected the holistic task of careful maintenance better. But in practice what’s often happened is the subscription props up bad decisions on product direction, because subs have to keep paying either way.
Having a threshold that you have to cross to ask for a paid upgrade makes developers better at figuring out what their users *actually* want, because if they don’t want it enough to upgrade, that’s your revenue gone. Obviously it gets harder to keep doing that over time, but it does keep you honest. How many users are simply enduring your changes rather than rooting for them now that they have to keep paying just to use it? I think it promotes the bad product management I’ve increasingly seen
I do sympathise with developers needing to keep the lights on, and that maintenance costs money (even most of the money over the long term) but still, I don’t think it changes the facts. Also I recognise app delivery companies like Apple are making it hard to do anything else but subscriptions (side eye)
@sinbad You described Adobe with atomic precision.
🅻🆄🅴Subscriptions changed the dynamic.
Previously, one had to choose to pay a company for a good.
Subscriptions flip this on its head. One has to choose to stop paying for a good.
In practice this likely lowers the speed at which an audience will pull away from a service and find a better one.
@sinbad I recall that there used to be an excitement about the new features in a new release of a software.
Now an upgrade make me groan because I am expecting something to break or a UI change that slows me down
@sinbad The only company I know who's doing subscriptions right is JetBrains. They have many tiers to cover different markets. You can pay monthly or get a discount for yearly (which, shocker, isn't always the csse). But most importantly, when you reach one year in your subscription, the version of the software you are subscribed to that were available a year prior becomes permanently available to you, even if you stop subscribing. It doesn't suffer from the issue you mention as much.
@kawazoe yeah my JetBrains sub is one of the few I’m happy to pay for
@sinbad @luna I think you are conflating a number of trends and pressures. I also think that subs are a net positive in a lot of the things I use and subscribe to. But I do see where some of my favorite software is getting worse as they pursue new customers (often in bulk) more than they try to sustain their existing ones. And subs are probably part of that dynamic.
@sinbad that but also
The environment that fund softwares projects changed. It is highly possible that the subscription part is correlation not causation. Just saying.
@sinbad
Great observation. I think there's a further discussion around bugs -- a bug in released software may make someone want a refund, however in a subscription model we get told to wait (keep paying) and it will get fixed. The game is now to have outstanding bugs for just shy of how long it will take people to unsubscribe.
Obviously the discussion here splits around having an income stream to pay devs to fix bugs but those of us old enough to remember when you paid for products once there was an expectation that the thing worked and did what it was advertised as doing -- a reality seemingly completely lost to time. As a result subscription products are essentially in perpetual "beta" but cost as much as the real thing.
@sinbad There's also the fundamental principle that it's wrong to force people to rent the tools they need to do their jobs.
And once companies have locked people into that arrangement, what incentive do they have to maintain those tools in working condition? They get their money, and people have to pay, no matter what.
@sinbad @Alphastream I feel like you’ve just described the stock market, which is an interesting take on subscriptions. I think you could also make the same argument for other products too like streaming services re:Netflix.
@sinbad i'm curious how this applies to subscriptions plus a perpetual license. e.g., jetbrains lets you keep the software after you subscribe for a whole year.
i'm inclined to say it gives them ongoing revenue for maintenance without holding users hostage. although i don't think i currently pay for any software using this model.
@alys yeah it’s better although bugfixes are an issue. I pay a JetBrains sub and it’s excellent value, so far they’re an outlier