[fearthetelomere]

Remember: it's local-first, not offline.

When users subscribe they should be purchasing a license that renews periodically. Local-first apps should validate the license (based on its expiry) by connecting to the internet to ensure users are subscribed. If they're not subscribed or they don't have internet access, they cannot use pay-walled features. You should offer a free, fair, and robust export tool for those not subscribed, though unfortunately not many companies do this.

What am I missing here? The drawback is of course when customers don't have internet access but are still valid subscribers, so they lose access to pay-walled features. One option would be to only offer annual licenses (infrequent license checking), another would be to offer a complementary 7 day license extension for the short-term until the user reconnects to the internet (grace period).

Stop giving away your value proposition for free. Get paid fairly.

[lolinder]

Part of the ethos of local-first is permanent ownership of software over subscription services. Sure, it's not technically in the name, but it's very much part of the background for TFA.

[fearthetelomere]

I see, I didn't know that.

Why would one sell permanent ownership of a networked product? I've been seeing the rise of "lifetime" subscription levels (pay once) for SaaS products, but I'm curious as to what the actual long-term economics of it are.

If your cost of operations is not a one-time cost per user, I don't see how you can avoid a subscription model.

[lolinder]

> Why would one sell permanent ownership of a networked product?

You wouldn't. Maybe TFA has an extreme interpretation of local-first, but the entire point of the article is eliminating the last vendor-controlled server from certain kinds of apps so that the user can own the software forever.

Obviously this doesn't work for all apps, and it sounds like OP may have one that needs some form of network component. In that case what you propose would work very well.

[britannio]

You can charge the user once upfront, possibly after a free trial. 37 signals are trying it out with once.com. As a developer, you are in control of how local-first your application should be.

[braden-lk]

The way we handle it is: subscribing = full access, non-subscribing = read-only access. Philosophically we'd probably not be viewed as "true" local-first software given this constraint, but like you said: we can't give away our value prop for free.