[jbstack]

That isn't the same thing at all.

If I buy version 2 then it's mine and I can continue to use it for as long as I want, if I'm happy with the feature set. I can ignore version 3 or choose to buy it. If I buy it then I now own two products instead of one. Sometimes the older version might even be better (e.g. features I like have been removed or made worse).

With a subscription model I'm forced to pay again and again even if I'm perfectly happy with version 2.

[bluGill]

In theory you are correct but realistically you will upgrade.

[GrinningFool]

The difference is without subscription, I can be pretty sure the next major version will benefit me.

With subscription,the only thing certain is that the seller wants to do as little as possible to keep taking my money. This tends to result on product updates that benefit them.

[stavros]

Not only that, they will actively make the product worse for you because someone will give them more money than you to do it.

[Analemma_]

This kind of shoddy, surface-level "incentives alignment" analysis can just as easily be used to prove the opposite: with the "pay once, then pay for upgrades" model, sellers are incentivized to never actually fix all the bugs so that you are always forced to buy the next version.

[GrinningFool]

Have you not seen what's happened in this industry over the last decades and the way it's actually playing out?

[bluGill]

Except in the case of a natural monopoly (which doesn't apply to software) you can always switch to something else. Which means the seller needs to remain better than the alternatives.

[GrinningFool]

You underestimate inertia, and the fact that the industry has trained people that they must pay continually. On top of that, the common practice is to make it sufficiently hard to get your data out of your system and into the competition's - even when there's reasonably priced competition it does a great job at adding to inertia.

[abanana]

This is betraying a way of thinking that suggests what's normal now is the way it's always been.

Given "there was a time that subscriptions for software were virtually unheard of", it's safe to assume we're talking about more than a couple of years ago. To talk as if most users always used to upgrade, suggests you might be young enough not to remember the software industry before a decade or two ago.

In general, users very much didn't upgrade. That's exactly why the industry forced subscriptions on us. They weren't getting income anymore, when the older version of their software did the job perfectly well.

[bluGill]

I'm old enough to remember that time. People did up grade. Some of them rushed out to buy the latest version when it was released. Some of them waited until they got a new computer. Many of them tried to not upgrade until someone using the new version sent them a file and then they couldn't open it thus forcing an upgrade. A few only upgraded every other version.

I wasn't an automatic everybody upgraded on day one like subscriptions are, but it amounted to similar: regular upgrades over time.

[stavros]

Nope, we used to just stay on the version we bought on plenty of software, because it worked fine for our needs.