| Let me add some more fuel to the debate - How can software-as-a-service be regulated in a way that it balances consumer rights and the rights of a business? Perhaps: 1. Every SaaS business should be compelled to offer both a subscription price and perpetual license at a fixed price. 2. The fixed price of a perpetual license should not be more than 10x or 20x (?) of the monthly subscription price. 3. If a user has opted for subscription payment, they should get a perpetual licence after they have paid a certain subscription amount over a period that is not more than 2x or 3x of the fixed price of the perpetual license. 4. SaaS businesses should not be allowed to hold users data hostage if the user decides to end the subscription. (This can be tricky if the data is in some proprietary format). 5. As much as possible, the SaaS should be able to run offline on a user's computer without needing to offload computing to servers. Ofcourse, most of the above are practical only for software that you can actually run on your computer and don't require massive computing powers from data centers that some services may need. But then again, that's exactly the kind of software that don't need to be SaaS at all in the first place, as the article too points out. |