[benjiro]

> Good riddance to software subscriptions.

Counter argument ... at what point is software still profitable to be sold?

I am running my Office 2007 still, and that thing is now almost 20 years old. That was a one time sale, with no other revenue for Microsoft.

I am not condoning subscriptions but one time selling software only works good, if your a small team with low overhead. The more you sell, the more support becomes a issue. And normal customers do not pay for support.

Making software now has become easier with LLMs but the same problem keeps existing in regards to support. Sure, you can outsource this to LLMs but lets just say that is problematic (being kind).

So unless you plan on making software that is not heavily supported/updated, and keep a low single/team cost...

If you sold a program for a one time fee of ... $39.

What if somebody now sells the same for $29 with LLMs. And the next guy in China does it even cheaper because his overhead is even smaller. Eventually you get into abandonware where software is made to just eat sales from the bigger guy and that is it.

Unless you focus on companies, and they have way less issue paying for subscriptions (if it includes support). You see the issue. People kind of overlook the cost of actually running a self employed job or a company (this is a MAJOR cost the moment you need to hire somebody).

So no, i do not see subscriptions going away because companies will pay for it. And on the normal consumer level, paid support as the solution?

[barnabee]

I buy the support argument for companies.

I also buy the argument that a lot of time people are actually paying for cloud storage. While I'd love to see a generic protocol for cloud or self-hosted storage that every app can sync to, I expect we'll continue to see subscription software persist by locking down and gatekeeping cloud storage and sync, too.

But really I would be happy for that to go away.

I don't use much software that's sold in any way[0], and I'd prefer it to be none. The ideal situation is for it to always be better to collaborate on open source software than to build in private and keep it to yourself.

[0] I do donate to projects I like and use, though

[tonyedgecombe]

>The ideal situation is for it to always be better to collaborate on open source software than to build in private and keep it to yourself.

This works for some software (developer tools is the prime example) but not so much for other things. Who is going to maintain the MTD software I used for my VAT returns without recompense. Who is going to update the PAYE payroll software I relied on.

Even with developer tools I feel we will lose something without companies like JetBrains. There would be no Kotlin without people paying for their software.

That's before you think about huge corporations leeching off of our free work or the AI companies vacuuming up open source only to regurgitate it for $200 a month.

Developers should consider that most people value things by how much they pay and if they aren't paying anything then you and your work can't have much value.

[barnabee]

> Developers should consider that most people value things by how much they pay and if they aren't paying anything then you and your work can't have much value.

Most people in most situations pay as little as they can get away with not as much as they value the product or service.

The only time this is arguably somewhat untrue is when the point of having the thing is to signal wealth, but even someone buying e.g. a Rolex wants to do so as cheaply as possible, so it's only really true when they're directly spending the money in front of people (think bar, restaurant, nightclub, etc.)

I agree that right now it's mostly developer tools that are doing best in terms of open source. But browsers, operating systems, 3D modelling software, image/photo editing, and many others are not so far behind either.

My assertion/belief[0], though, is that the direction of travel is for open source to become dominant in more and more classes of software, especially as AI reduces the cost of contribution and collaboration, and disincentivises closed, proprietary software.

[0] Based on what I and others around me have been able to do with AI already and how fast it is moving.