Subscription software - the big problem with it that nobody is talking about

jvickers · Sep 25, 2024

I either use older versions of software, such as my perpetual license of Acrobat 2020, or I don't really use the software at all. It's unfortunate that we're a rent your software society nowadays, and that's what it is.

We also have this "build your own furniture" society going instead of getting preassembled things. But that's a different story...

pparks1 · Sep 25, 2024

50ShadesOfDirt said:
On the exact license costs, please insert your own numbers, and feel free to submit your estimate of *total costs* for one seat in your home, and how many seats you really have. So, yes, an OS might not be $100, but hey, it might be more, depending on what you are doing.

Open source, here we come ...

We have 4 full size gaming desktops at home (me, wife, daughter, son....all still on Windows 10 Pro). I have a beelink Mini PC running 11 Pro. I have a MacBook Pro (2013), my daughter has a Macbook Air (2020 M1), and I have a Mac Mini (2020 M1).

From a subscription base, I run the following

Office 365. I have the family sub, with a work discount, so it's $69 a year versus $99 a year.
LastPass. I have the family sub, which is $48 a year.
Microsoft Game Pass Ultimate. $19.99 a month. I use it for my Xbox Live Gold subscription and my son and I play PC games from it on our PC's.

That's all that I have recurring that I would really equate to a PC/computing expense

Other subs for things though

Ring Camera $100 a year
Amazon prime, $139 a year
Amazon music $169 a year
Costco membership $130 a year
Gym Membership. $10 a month
YouTubeTV $72.99 a month
Netflix $22.99 a month
Apple TV. $9.99 a month
Peacock TV. $7.99 a month
Paramount Plus. with showtime. $12.99 a month
Car Insurance. $4,000 a year.

neves · Sep 25, 2024

A core issue with subscription software... there's rarely any clarity/transparency about what you're actually getting. Even more than that - there's room for deception - where you get the software itself - but not much else is visible in terms of updates. Can't help wondering... how many of this updates - are more like a scam. I mean, while checking the release notes - you'll find all this updates - where they claim to have fixed this or that (quite vague about it too) - but you never really see anything different - even after hundreds of such updates. So who exactly are you paying and for what?!

It's like... i'm paying for a show.... for the marketing team (as the saying goes: a good product sells itself - a bad one needs a good marketing team), for devs which do their jobs like actors - more good at pretending then actually doing their job.

Take a real life service for comparison, such as... the Internet + TV + phone subscription. Even there you have a lot of people on standby (in case there's actual issues), but it's less relevant - because you're actually getting internet (at measurable speeds), hundreds of TV stations. So it's quite clear what you're paying for. Even software wise... i tend to have the opposite experience with open source software - which is quite ironic since their income for that given software is donation based and yet - in most cases... there's actual transparency in their release notes - with what was actually changed or actually fixed - which is also visible in practice while testing out the app in question. But this are usually passion projects - so they actually try to improve them - maybe hopping that one day will actually be worth something. On the other hand - a lot of this apps which became famous - seem to rely mainly on the former glory of a given app - from back when devs were actually trying to improve it and made an impression for whatever reason (even false advertising - where it claimed to be fixing and improving Windows in one way or the other - while displaying this baddges with big numbers of things they improved, tho... it turned-up to be mostly a visual scam).

BunnyJ · Sep 25, 2024

andrew129260 said:
I expect them to allow you to buy a version and own it. And choose when to update it. Not being forced into a subscription as being the only method. Every product should be purchasable and not forced as a subscription being the only option.

Then you shouldn't get either support, maintenance or updates.

No one works for free and the developers need to be compensated for their work. In my case I choose to use Adobe and pay a monthly fee. There are other products out there, but I found that Adobe meets my needs the best.

In the end you can either choose to subscribe, find a product that you can outright purchase or look for a shareware tool.

BunnyJ · Sep 25, 2024

50ShadesOfDirt said:
Another hidden problem: some software companies have done away with the "one-time purchase". I keep running up against companies who have indeed done away with the single one-time purchase, and expect me to join their subscription plan. I politely write them an email explaining why I can't do that, and they politely write back "tuff", without really extending me any kind of option other than subscription.

I write back again thanking them for their time, mentioning that I"ll look elsewhere, and ... crickets ... so, they lost a piece of business, and are OK with it, because they want everyone driven to this subscription model.

On the exact license costs, please insert your own numbers, and feel free to submit your estimate of *total costs* for one seat in your home, and how many seats you really have. So, yes, an OS might not be $100, but hey, it might be more, depending on what you are doing.

Open source, here we come ...

You expect them to give you a special deal?? It's their product and they can sell it as they see fit.

While open source is a good option, it's not always the best choice for many of us,.

trevo · Sep 25, 2024

TraderGary said:
I'm not being forced into any of my subscriptions. If the value is there, I subscribe. Period.

That is the crux of the matter, consumer choice.

antspants · Sep 25, 2024

BunnyJ said:
It doesn't bother me to pay monthly for Adobe. I understand that they have to pay their staff to maintain and update their products and that cost money.

Jeff I think that is applicable to all software.

pseymour said:
I work on a few open source projects, and I talk to other devs as a part of that. I can tell you for certain that there are money problems on that side of the house also. Lots of people just take and take from open source projects, asking for support and sometimes new features, without ever supporting the project. This often leads to developer burn out, and they walk away.

Amen to that. I have my favorites. It isn’t much but I dumped $200 on FreeFileSync and have an auto payment of $5 a month.
Most invaluable program for me. I could pay more but it’s not just my responsibility. You pay between $6 - $9 for a coffee in Australia, depending on what you order and where you go. So…

ShamrockRig · Sep 25, 2024

50ShadesOfDirt said:
Subscription software, according to all the companies talking about it, and trying to get us switched to it (whether we want that or not), has a big hidden problem:

*nobody can afford to switch every single piece of software they use to the subscription model*

To illustrate this problem (using estimates, and remember, everything is per year, per PC), let's list "what software we use, every day, whether daily or even just once per week":

1. $100: OS
2. $50: office suite
3. $50: antivirus suite
4. $50: backup suite
5. $25: utility #1 (pick any utility)
$25: utility #2 (keep picking 'em)
...

The above got just one pc to the point where someone can use it. Multiply that by the number of pc's you use in your daily life (physical, virtual, doesn't matter), and times the number of seats in your family (you, spouse, kids).

Now, continue the exercise with those critical software suites (CAD, Adobe whatever, etc.):
6. $50 to $100: your specialty app (CAD, DTP, etc.)
...

If, like me, you ended up with over $1000 per pc (physical, virtual), times a minimum of 4 seats, it wouldn't be long before we're paying upwards of $5000, per year, to move to a subscription model. I can't pay that every year. What I can do is pay for a key piece of software as a one-time purchase, and use it for as long as possible.

What this subscription push is doing is pushing me towards more open-source software, and/or abandoning the use of some key piece of software, until something changes. At the moment, it's do everything as open-source as possible, and minimize the number of purchases of licenses that are not subscription:

- office suite: using libreoffice
- cad: plenty of free options
...

What are your thoughts on this whole "subscription" mess?

Again, it's not "any one piece of software moving to a subscription-model" that is a problem, it's all of them, moving in this direction, that is the big problem. That's $1000's of dollars, every year ... I submit that this is/will be unsustainable, until some solution comes out where all the software vendors work together, vs each trying to grab a piece of the subscription pie for themselves, and leaving us with the bigger problem.

I dont use #2 #3 #4 or any paid #5, Os was a free up from 10. Depends on needs but for most dont require all that, especially not required to " get a pc to the point where someone can use it"

andrew129260 · Sep 26, 2024

BunnyJ said:
Then you shouldn't get either support, maintenance or updates.

No one works for free and the developers need to be compensated for their work.

Never said devs should work for free. That's quite a leap your making just because I am asking not to have to pay a constant ongoing subscription. And that's fine to not get updates or maintenance. That's kinda the whole point, I pay for a version, I don't expect to get future ones for free.

I do think support should be a thing for a version you bought for the year or so its "supported" for.

All of this used to be a thing, until companies got greedy and CEO's salaries ballooned to ridiculous levels. Number must constantly go up and all that.

I have supported open source projects in the past with an ongoing payment. Pebble (rebble) services for example. I have supported and donated to other software I find invaluable.

trevo said:
That is the crux of the matter, consumer choice.

Yup. There should be a subscription option for people that want that, and an option to buy a product version. Not just one or the other.

All I want is the choice. That's all I am asking for. Luckily microsoft understands that and has released a version of office you can straight up buy and dont need to do the subscription. Which is great.

Adobe should do the same like they used to. They took away buying a single version and forced a subscription and that is not okay. I would argue the people that don't see this as a problem are too privileged in life to recognize the problems.

Quandary · Sep 26, 2024

andrew129260 said:
Yup. There should be a subscription option for people that want that, and an option to buy a product version. Not just one or the other.

All I want is the choice. That's all I am asking for. Luckily microsoft understands that and has released a version of office you can straight up buy and dont need to do the subscription. Which is great.

100% agree, and the subscription should be reasonably priced.

markw51 · Sep 26, 2024

pparks1 said:
We have 4 full size gaming desktops at home (me, wife, daughter, son....all still on Windows 10 Pro). I have a beelink Mini PC running 11 Pro. I have a MacBook Pro (2013), my daughter has a Macbook Air (2020 M1), and I have a Mac Mini (2020 M1).

From a subscription base, I run the following

Office 365. I have the family sub, with a work discount, so it's $69 a year versus $99 a year.

LastPass. I have the family sub, which is $48 a year.

Microsoft Game Pass Ultimate. $19.99 a month. I use it for my Xbox Live Gold subscription and my son and I play PC games from it on our PC's.

That's all that I have recurring that I would really equate to a PC/computing expense

Other subs for things though

Ring Camera $100 a year

Amazon prime, $139 a year

Amazon music $169 a year

Costco membership $130 a year

Gym Membership. $10 a month

YouTubeTV $72.99 a month

Netflix $22.99 a month

Apple TV. $9.99 a month

Peacock TV. $7.99 a month

Paramount Plus. with showtime. $12.99 a month

Car Insurance. $4,000 a year.

what car do you drive to pay $4000 a year to insure it?

jimbo45 · Sep 26, 2024

andrew129260 said:
Never said devs should work for free. That's quite a leap your making just because I am asking not to have to pay a constant ongoing subscription. And that's fine to not get updates or maintenance. That's kinda the whole point, I pay for a version, I don't expect to get future ones for free.

I do think support should be a thing for a version you bought for the year or so its "supported" for.

I have supported open source projects in the past with an ongoing payment. Pebble (rebble) services for example. I have supported and donated to other software I find invaluable.

Yup. There should be a subscription option for people that want that, and an option to buy a product version. Not just one or the other.

All I want is the choice. That's all I am asking for. Luckily microsoft understands that and has released a version of office you can straight up buy and dont need to do the subscription. Which is great.

Adobe should do the same like they used to. They took away buying a single version and forced a subscription and that is not okay.

I think this HAS been discussed "Ad Nauseam". Most consumers hate it as it means a proliferation of services from multiple sources -- difficult to manage and for many people they end up (or could end up) paying much more. No wonder companies like it -- especially when Banks use the "recurring payments" model which customers can find hard to stop / cancel. Just look at the proliferation of Multi-media providers for TV and movies. It's just plain BONKERS.

Fortunately around 90% of what I need or regularly use can be done on Linux -- all open source stuff -- and note a lot of these open source developers do actually get paid - especially if they work on Fedora (from Red Hat / IBM), OpenSuse (from S.U.S.E) etc. The distros emanating from these companies are used in developing their commercial servers - so it's a 3-way win-win-win benefit -- developers get paid, users get decent free software, and the companies get their next server versions being tested by far more users and hardware than they could do themselves. That's why I'd only recommend people if they want to use Linux to use distros - Fedora, Opensuse and Debian with its derivatives e.g ArchLinux etc.

On Windows I avoid subscription software like the plague -- Adobe Photoshop -- I'm still using PHOTOSHOP CC - the last one before you had to have a cloud subscription with Adobe and it was non subscription.

@pparks1

Either you must be driving a top of the line 1 million dollar plus Mayerbach, or have a zillion drunk driving tickets, or got about 19 reckless teenagers on your insurance to pay that sort of price for motor insurance.

Cheers
jimbo

pparks1 · Sep 26, 2024

markw51 said:
what car do you drive to pay $4000 a year to insure it?

LOL, I was waiting for somebody to ask me that.

I have a family, so we have 3 cars. And I live in Michigan (in the US) and we have some of the highest auto insurance rates in the US. None of these are fancy cars. All 3 cars are Honda's. (2016 Accord, 2017 Pilot and 2018 Civic). No accidents, no claims, no tickets, wife and I are 50 and my daughter is turning 20. My 17 year old son is not a listed driver, or the price would be even higher.

BunnyJ · Sep 26, 2024

andrew129260 said:
Never said devs should work for free. That's quite a leap your making just because I am asking not to have to pay a constant ongoing subscription. And that's fine to not get updates or maintenance. That's kinda the whole point, I pay for a version, I don't expect to get future ones for free.

I do think support should be a thing for a version you bought for the year or so its "supported" for.

All of this used to be a thing, until companies got greedy and CEO's salaries ballooned to ridiculous levels. Number must constantly go up and all that.

I have supported open source projects in the past with an ongoing payment. Pebble (rebble) services for example. I have supported and donated to other software I find invaluable.

If you want new features, you have to pay for them. Putting the blame on CEO's is silly. This is going into a political discussion, and I'm done

jvickers · Sep 26, 2024

pparks1 said:
LOL, I was waiting for somebody to ask me that.

I have a family, so we have 3 cars. And I live in Michigan (in the US) and we have some of the highest auto insurance rates in the US. None of these are fancy cars. All 3 cars are Honda's. (2016 Accord, 2017 Pilot and 2018 Civic). No accidents, no claims, no tickets, wife and I are 50 and my daughter is turning 20. My 17 year old son is not a listed driver, or the price would be even higher.

That's some serious insurance. We live in Georgia, where the insurance is far more reasonable, though still theft in my opinion. I think we pay $2400 or there about for two sports cars and a beat-up truck. My wife's super speeder ticket finally fell off the insurance.

But insurance is a necessity in society. I'm not keen on so many software companies moving their product to subscription services. Of course, if I don't want to pay for the service, I simply won't get it. Plus, there are a lot of free, nearly equivalent pieces of software out there.

BunnyJ · Sep 26, 2024

jvickers said:
That's some serious insurance. We live in Georgia, where the insurance is far more reasonable, though still theft in my opinion. I think we pay $2400 or there about for two sports cars and a beat-up truck. My wife's super speeder ticket finally fell off the insurance.

But insurance is a necessity in society. I'm not keen on so many software companies moving their product to subscription services. Of course, if I don't want to pay for the service, I simply won't get it. Plus, there are a lot of free, nearly equivalent pieces of software out there.

I pay 82 a month for my Ford Focus SE. .. that's 984 a year and I live in TN

markw51 · Sep 26, 2024

BunnyJ said:
I pay 82 a month for my Ford Focus SE. .. that's 984 a year and I live in TN

I pay £324 a year for my 2018 VW Tiguan R-Line 4 motion DSG, and I live in Devon, England.

andrew129260 · Sep 26, 2024

BunnyJ said:
If you want new features, you have to pay for them. Putting the blame on CEO's is silly. This is going into a political discussion, and I'm done

I am paying for it? If I buy a version, I want the features in that version. If they launch a new version update I of course don't expect to get the new features in that version.

This isn't a politics thing, thats a cop-out. Greed isn't a politics thing, it's a human decency thing. And Yes, I do blame higher ups making millions of dollars in salary and then saying oh sorry we cant pay our workers unless you buy a subscription. People are paid peanuts compared to the higher ups. Constant growth is not sustainable, and that's what every company tries to do.

There are a ton of things that are claimed as a politics thing, when it absolutely isn't. It's really about human decency and not being greedy and not looking out only for yourself. It's just easier to claim politics and be ignorant.

BunnyJ · Sep 26, 2024

andrew129260 said:
I am paying for it? If I buy a version, I want the features in that version. If they launch a new version update I of course don't expect to get the new features in that version.

This isn't a politics thing, thats a cop-out. Greed isn't a politics thing, it's a human decency thing. And Yes, I do blame higher ups making millions of dollars in salary and then saying oh sorry we cant pay our workers unless you buy a subscription. People are paid peanuts compared to the higher ups. Constant growth is not sustainable, and that's what every company tries to do.

There are a ton of things that are claimed as a politics thing, when it absolutely isn't. It's really about human decency and not being greedy and not looking out only for yourself. It's just easier to claim politics and be ignorant.

You went from a semi-technical discussion to one that I no longer care to participate in. IMO, discussing 'greed' is also the same as discussing a political issue.

I'm done..

andrew129260 · Sep 26, 2024

BunnyJ said:
You went from a semi-technical discussion to one that I no longer care to participate in. IMO, discussing 'greed' is also the same as discussing a political issue.

I'm done..

thats fine you can still ignore the rest and address this then. And if you dont want to thats fine too. Have a good one.

andrew129260 said:
I am paying for it? If I buy a version, I want the features in that version. If they launch a new version update I of course don't expect to get the new features in that version.

Subscription software - the big problem with it that nobody is talking about

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