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Could also be reverse: why pay for software that won't run on your computer anyway?


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Ah yes, because people won't pay for software that has a few bugs.

The counterpoint to this is that paid-for software often does not include any sort of support that's worth having.

Because the product being bought isn't software.

Because the person buying the software isn't the person using the software.

And what’s the problem with paying for software you use?

What's the story here? I'm always willing to purchase software if it's actually good.

Doesn't the reverse hold true too? If you rely on software you paid $0 for and it fails you, you got what you paid for.

The obvious question is why don't you use your software instead of selling it?

Because you paid for software you can no longer use.

Try explaining that to customers who paid for the software and don't understand why they have to pay again.

> Then the bean counters say "why are you buying this software, when you could have gotten it for free."

Because it's the "officially supported" version and companies don't like running software that isn't eligible for official support.


Because otherwise you can't use the software?

I fail to see how this isn't objectively worse than purchasing software outright.

You can only ever run software for one architecture on a single machine, why pay for getting stuff you can't use?

Yeah, but your really just shuffling costs around. You're either paying up front for a supported product or paying for staff that knows the unsupported product. In this particular case they got hosed by a shitty product, but that doesn't translate into a reality of not having access to the internals of software being (always)dangerous.

> Customers refusing to upgrade on-premises software

After a certain period of time, that software worked just fine for those customers. Photoshop is a great example. Sure, you won’t get the flashiest features, but CS4 will still work for you on a Win7 machine without any additional fees paid.


Support might be a reasonable reason, yes.

But crapware can not pay that much. The crapware creators themselves get less revenue than licensing costs, and they can kick back just a fraction of that revenue. (That is, unless they have another business model that isn't selling licenses or spying on users.)


Which is a good reason to eschew software that's delivered via third-party servers versus running on your hardware.

Why don't they just start charging for it? Personally, I'd much rather run software that costs money but is high quality than software that is free but riddled with adware.
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