Ask HN: What is our community doing about the subscription software epidemic?

[dombama]

It seems every week on here there is a thread lamenting how users are forced into subscription software services with no attempt at a solution. Inspired by the recent Reddit protest, is there something we can do to combat this? Perhaps a mass unsubscribe day? Happy to organize it if there's interest or contribute to any efforts already ongoing in this space.

[gregjor]

What community? People who share some aspects of a profession, or read the same news aggregator site, don't constitute a "community."

For my part I pay for services that offer value to me, and don't pay for those that don't. I'd rather subscribe than getting harassed with ads and popups. The people who put the effort into creating useful services shouldn't have to live off charity.

[mattbrewsbytes]

If you don't like the business model of subscription based software, and think there is a user segment that feels the same, and think you can build a product as installed software with a one time fee, build it.

Keep in mind your product may have a varied client install base of Windows 10, Windows 11, Mac OSes, possibly various flavors of Linux as well as mobile OSes as target platforms. I guess depending on your product, maybe you build and sell a self hosted server option? In that case you have to think of what server OSes people could be running and figure out a way to help those customers install, configure and patch the software you'll sell to them. Running things in the cloud and with containers is fairly common so you may want to look at creating container images customers could use and ways for them to keep their data when you roll out new versions.

You'd of course want some really good install documentation for people to start with first. Then you'd need to staff up support people to help customers with installs, patches, upgrades and security vulnerabilities in the stack.

[jqpabc123]

subscription software services

The key word here is "service". This is what most subscriptions are addressing.

What would a viable "solution" to service look like? Self service perhaps? Or maybe no service?

Have you considered that "self service" and "no service" are options that subscribers have already specifically chosen to avoid for reasons that are perfectly logical and valid to them? Just unsubscribe and say "no" to service is not a universally viable alternative.

This seems akin to looking for a solution to "food" or "water".

[friend_and_foe]

This community is building it lol. Most people here are silicon valley engineers, founders of SaaS businesses, we are the ones doing the leg work to make this all happen.

[jamil7]

> It seems every week on here there is a thread lamenting how users are forced into subscription software services

Who exactly is forced into subscription software? If you don't want to pay for a subscription then use something open source (maybe consider donating or contributing), paid up front or write your own.

[ironmagma]

> paid up front

The option is increasingly not available. That's the issue.

[jamil7]

Yeah I get it. But from someone who's sold software this way before, for paid up front to make economic sense it needs to be a quite a significant amount. Majority of people don't want to commit to this.

[MattGaiser]

Are that many users, particularly the high value users, all that unhappy with the model? For starters, businesses are generally thrilled for how it simplifies budgeting and maintenance issues, and they probably pay way more for software than individuals.

This feels like a particularly HN obsession, like complaining about Electron being part of everything or wondering why people pay for software in the first place when open source alternatives exist.

[balderdash]

Don’t worry - as they say in the commodities business “nothing cures high prices like high prices” - except in the case you might say “nothing cures too many subscriptions like too many subscriptions”

[endisneigh]

if you don't get value, unsubscribe.

[seydor]

Making more of it?