| I've gone back over my posts to see if I said anything out of line, and I don't think I did. I'm just being direct; I haven't been nasty, or even snarky (which you were, consistently, in your last response). I am indeed rightfully disturbed by what I see as a greedy, lazy business model that shuts lower-income folks out of the tech world, so the tone's not going to change. I'm not going to address most of your post, because there honestly is not a lot to reply to: you're just reiterating assertions and—more problematically—insisting I said things I didn't say. I don't think it's the best use of my time to indulge that. > If you don't think the users who derive value from the app every day, and need it to keep existing, should be the ones who pay for that app to keep existing, well, I don't know what to tell you. Show me where I said I don't think users should pay for the app to keep existing. I'm fine with paying for app releases. Once per release. > There are other advantages for consumers too. For instance, you can pay like $20-30 for all Adobe's top-end apps for a month - to try them out or to do a one-off project now and then. Cool! If it's such an advantage for consumers, I'm all for offering that. Just include a lifetime license as well. If rentware is so beneficial to consumers, then there wouldn't be any problem offering people a choice, correct? Let the market decide. > But it's clear you think that continuing to make sure software works forever, fielding support issues from customers, making updates for every new OS feature, is "sitting back" and doing nothing Again: Show me exactly where I said that. I'm getting tired of this; you saw that I said the exact opposite as far as updates. Regarding support, again, I have no problem charging for that. That's a service. I'm disappointed by this last response of yours. You came off as reasonable initially, but the shift to deliberately misquoting me is not cool. I don't think you should do that; it implies a lot about how confident you are in your reasoning. Anyway—I suspect the rentware fad will be over in a few years, since everyone hates it and subscription fatigue is still setting in. (Especially if a recession, which I think is coming, makes a lot of folks question why they're paying $50–$100 in subscriptions every month for software they would have owned a few years ago.) The market will settle down to either a hybrid—apps offered under both rentware and lifetime licensing—or simply back to charging a more reasonable one-time amount. And devs will be fine; they'll just have to treat their businesses as actual businesses, not lifestyle passive-income streams. I'm good with that. |