Nowadays businesses use this to create a constant revenue stream from what used to be a single purchase. It's not to service the product, its to continue to soak money from the people who do end up spending on it.

Aside from security updates most software I have, I just want them to stop. No changes, no design upgrades, no "we changed this tier of our pricing" etc. Most of that stuff is working against the customer not for them. Your SaaS model is so you can make money, I have no incentive to pay more than I have to.

You have to upgrade eventually, though. In theory, the SaaS product could be priced the same as the shrink-wrapped version, just divided by 60 months. I suspect it's more expensive, though.

All things being equal, if I ran IT, I'd rather have the SaaS model because I'll always have the latest version and not have to deal with the drama of upgrades every 5 years. I'd also prefer it as the vendor because I don't need to support multiple versions of the software long-term.

Depends on what product, and my use case.

> To be clear I am not saying I want subscription based software, but I understand the business argument for it.

Has nothing to do with more supported X or better architecture, its just about money. In fact SaaS offerings are often compromised and worse of than when they were standalone (at least in my experience with software that made transition from standard releases to subscription).

Additionally in my experience with software that went that route (standard paid releases to subscription) that just signals that the customer milking has become, and pretty much any new feature is looked at from how can we milk it standpoint.

I don’t agree with this at all. I believe subscription models encourage laziness and/or introduction of unnecessary or complex features (to show that busywork is being done).

Sell a license for applications with support included for a year or whatever, like developers used to and still do. If you continue providing more value to customers, and if you aren’t too greedy to introduce new versions and upgrades for trivial updates often, why would the majority of your customers not purchase a paid upgrade every couple of years or so?

I feel there are many areas that are saturated and that developers struggle to figure out how to add more value...or rather, extract more money from customers (1Password in recent years is an example of this, in my experience).

Or not improve it all - but charge you for continued access.

While some businesses abuse SaaS pricing (e.g., MS office for very basic uses, acrobat pro for basic uses, etc.), I think the SaaS pricing model has aligned the interests of developers and consumers (esp. smaller devs and smaller consumers) in a way that has allowed a wider market to have access to a wider range of affordable software and ongoing support/updates than would be possible under the previous system.

There are definitely folks, often a small niche, who really just need an old version of a piece of software for one or two small functions, and maybe those folks should be built in to the SaaS pricing model somehow, but overall I think that the merits of SaaS pricing almost always outweigh the demerits by quite a bit.

How is that different from rent-seeking?

In particular, what does "keep the software alive" mean? I can understand that cloud services have a fixed cost of upkeep. I can understand that less so for software that runs on my own pc.

> The roadblock is of course customers wondering why they're still paying every month for a product that sees little change, and I don't have an answer to that, except the alternative had other issues as well.

That question is not that dumb. If you don't want any meaningful change to your software, why do you care that the company still exists? You might just as well have an old version that still works, whether or not the company is still maintaining it.

So yeah, in that situation, apart from the occasional security fix, I really wouldn't know what I'm paying for.

To take IntelliJ as an example, I can't think of an improvement since 2018 that I really would pay for. Largely enabling that is why they moved to the subscription process because people like me would use IntelliJ 18 for five or so years then update for OS support or whatever. €100/yr is way more than I used to pay for intelliJ, €240/yr is way more than I used to pay for Photoshop, etc. because SaaS conversions generally involved splitting the old upfront price as if customers were on a 2 year upgrade cycle rather than 5.

As for security updates, these feel like general hygiene, e.g. if someone's selling a physical electronic product here they need to keep it from manufacturer defects for two years. If my headphones have a bug where they catch fire the manufacturer needs to eat the cost and recall and fix/replace/refund them. Even if it does wipe out their margin from the upfront €100 cost. Similarly if commercial software lets someone own my computer with log message, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect recent software to be fixed.

I would pay to get software not as a service. Fuck your updates, I don't want bloody updates that end up breaking my stuff and wasting my time. Give me one version, no updates and no support, and I will give you top dollars. If I want an update I'll come back to repeat the process again, giving you top dollars again, several years down the road.

Are big purchases every several years cheaper than a subscription? I don't know and I don't care. Sell me your fucking software as a fucking static product, I am happy to pay the premium for it.

I could not disagree more. Subscriptions for software are a deeply unfair approach. Great for the companies, of course, but not for users.

A more fair approach is to charge for upgrades and support instead. At least that way, users only pay if/when they choose to obtain additional value.

My personal opinion is that this business model is simply not sustainable long term except for cases where the subscription model is a natural choice (Netflix for example). If I had to pay subscription for every piece of software I own I'd be ruined. With perpetual licenses however I only update / upgrade when I feel there is a benefit in it for me. Otherwise that old copy keeps working. I suspect I am not alone here.

As for not being relevant: so far I do not feel any lack of software offerings with perpetual licenses so allow me to disagree. I maybe irrelevant to your strict business model but not to the overall market.

> Saas isn't the only way to pay people.

> It kind of is if you have a product that people expect updates for, or you have to have very high prices, or a secondary source of income.

> > most software is living and breathing and requires continual investment Is it though? or is this broadly another side effect of value extraction focused engineering? I'm quite happy to buy a new version if it makes my life notably easier. CS2 is broadly a better experience than CC, etc. etc.

But are you happy to pay for better architecture that doesn't have shiny new features? Or support for new X (depending on the product this could be image formats, it could be architectures)? etc

To be clear I am not saying I want subscription based software, but I understand the business argument for it.

I feel like part of this stems from the fact that every service now wants to charge a monthly fee instead of offering a one time purchase.

If you want me to pay $X/mo, that fee has to correlate to the value you are providing me each month. The minute that equation changes, people start to consider other options.

One of the benefits to SaaS is that you can make more money and your revenue is more predictable, but on the other hand it means your market is more susceptible to competition because companies are comparing their options more frequently.

Sure as long as you also accept that you are not owed bug fixes it updates. If you however believe that with system upgrades you should get corresponding app upgrades, then it starts to sound more like a service. I like subscription because I want developers to treat this as a service: support, fixes, features, etc.

I find this a bit ironic. To solve the pain of purchasing SAAS, you need to subscribe to a SAAS. Additionally, I think it would be much more convincing if you offered an option in which there's a small upfront fee (or even none) and then you make money on how much you can make your client save.

I agree completely. I never want to pay more than once for Photoshop/Illustrator/etc. -- and the fact that Adobe has turned those into SaaS products really annoys me.

But products like an OS, browser, cloud-synced password manager, mail client, online git hosting, etc. -- for those, I would prefer to pay a subscription fee (to a company I trust to use it well).

But you had to decide to pay. Many did not. Those are transaction costs. As is downloading and installing software, something software running on a server and delivered through a browser doesn't require. Those ongoing costs must be paid for with ads or subscription revenue.

> Software had to be made right the first time when released on CD

But it never was. Particularly in a networked world. Perfect is the enemy of good.

SaaS isn't a fit for all products. Some software can be written once and never updated. Most cannot, and for that, SaaS is a better business model fit.

For the software I buy one time price is often about the same as the annual subscription. With perpetual license however I often do not upgrade for years. So the perpetual licensing is a clear winner for me. I understand that SAAS can make sense for other customers but it is their choice not mine. I just simply do not buy software without perpetual license. It ruffles my feathers in a bad way.

Of course I am not talking about services where monthly payment is a natural state like Netflix.

Only if you choose to use that type of "software". Literally none of the software I use is subscription or SaaS, because I make it a point to avoid those things.