It's a great reason why webapps suck. A licensed local app would be great here, as the customer wouldn't lose value when Fable disappears. Yet now customers lose all value. Great.
Yeah bummer that Safari and Firefox are blocking any origin file access for security reasons.
> when the company owning the DNS records for that origin goes out of business.
Likely not a problem. Local data in OPFS is synced with a remote server for collaboration reasons anyway.
> There's also the issue with actually having an executable that can just run without any external dependencies
Assume you target the browser as OS, then it's already possible to have an executable: Run the JS file that renders a UI. Related: We will likely have an app launcher demo soon for https://lix.opral.com/
Yep. I lament the loss of native, local apps all the time (and the prevalence of "always online" local apps - I've seen LoB apps that were promising, native apps only to find out they won't run offline because the app does a license check online at startup and will refuse to launch without a connection).
Everything as SaaS web apps is just yet another chapter in the enshittification of tech.
> I've seen LoB apps that were promising, native apps only to find out they won't run offline because the app does a license check online at startup and will refuse to launch without a connection
Isn't this fine as long as this is the only thing it does?
"Making sure this has been paid for" seems completely legitimate.
Totally fine and legitimate, the problem comes in situations where you might need to launch without an active internet connection. Arguably this wasn't the best vendor in the world, but IMO there should be a grace period, i.e., must connect at least x times per months instead of at every start up.
Keeping an app running requires personnel, personnel is expensive, and good personnel is unlikely to cool their heels on an EOL'd app at an EOL'd company.
It really doesn’t though. You could scale down to a 1-3 person team. Stop building new features. Keep a full stack dev on for 1year to fix bugs and the remaining team does customer support.
Hiring a contracting company for 3 mo per year to perform updates.
My guess is the decision maker doesn’t think it’s worth their time to run a business like this. Instead of rapidly shifting focus into a higher growth area, they would continue to be attached to a shrinking product
A 1-3 person team in the US is a half million per annum proposition, and, again, even if you could make the payroll, you have to retain qualified engineers for a role that has zero growth potential.
cool, so you hire one for 2x the the price of a full time one for 1 week per month. 12 weeks * 2x price < 52 weeks * 1x the price.
I've done this job for a 3-4 startups before. they can't afford a full time engineer, so they hire someone to work part-time to keep the lights on. its not a hard job and many engineers appreciate the consistent work and extra cash.
So frustrating as a user.