[jlangr]

The subscription model makes sense for the vendors--I get that it costs money to put out new versions and support things.

For me, it depends on the "stuff" and its longevity. E.G. for JetBrains, I'd rather pay ~$600 once and for all, since I doubt I'll move off of it any time soon. Instead, to get updates, I'll now pay $299 per year in perpetuity (after yr 2). So if I use it 10 more years, I plunk out almost $3000.

Even all the little junk adds up. $10 for Zoom, $12.50 for Slack, etc. etc. As a developer / consultant working in many different languages on a few platforms, I'm spending close to $2000 for subscriptions each year. It's a bit much.

[chasing]

Out of curiosity, do you use many pieces of software regularly that you last updated in 2007? Would you use IntelliJ 2007 for work today?

I don't know: $3k for ten years of updates to a key tool I use for work -- that seems low. Like, well below my budget for coffee.

$2k/yr total does seem high. That's higher than my costs for my various work-related subscriptions. But if that $2k provides tools you convert into 50x or 100x that in income... I mean, it seems like money well spent.

[bad_user]

I too have an IntelliJ IDEA subscription and I'm happy to pay money for it BECAUSE if I stopped paying, in my case, the community edition is open source and good enough. I basically could do all of my work with the free version, yet I pay them because I want to see Jetbrains thriving. But if they'd drop the community edition, I'd drop IntelliJ IDEA like a hot potato.

As a developer I got the best value from open source tools. I like the feeling of control that gives.

I do pay for Fastmail and for Dropbox, because my email and data are very important. And a good laptop is a must and I like MacBooks.

But my general rule of thumb is that subscriptions have to give a 10x return of investment to be worth it. And I'm sorry, but most tools don't deliver. You're claiming a 50x-100x return, but that's ridiculous.

As a dev I could do all of my work on Linux, using completely open source tools and I can get by with completely free documentation or by reading source code. I know that because I've been doing it for the better part of my career.

Basically productivity has more to do with knowledge than with tools and I'm not talking of the superficial knowledge that you get from beginner books, but the kind that you get by working on hard problems, reading academic papers and doing deep dives in source code that isn't yours.

So seeing OReilly change their business model, after years of recommending them, well, I'm not a cow to be milked or their personal ATM.