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by rebeccaskinner 1206 days ago
I actually look at this from the other direction: the need to somehow justify a monthly subscription fee has encouraged developers to add further user hostile features, including a move toward owning customers data and forcing customers to share data (often with egregious privacy invasive policies) and makes it harder for customers to interoperable with other software.
1 comments

my favorite negative example for this move:

YNAB (You need a budget) - https://www.youneedabudget.com/pricing/

they had a perfectly fine working offline app that i gladly upgraded for the full price every time it was available. now it's subcription/online only and i haven't left a dime there since. bye ynab i'm gonna miss you!

Which is ironic since the whole point of the app is to teach users to plan cash flows and find areas of excessive spending they didn’t recognize before when it came in periodically. I stopped using it once they pivoted but really, once you learn the basics, a spreadsheet or any other tracking method works just as well.