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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.


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

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

I don't think you get any guarantee that just because you pay for software that it works well and is not buggy.

Bad software is universal. It’s purpose is to milk the public tit. Not to deliver actual value. The value is in the money being paid.

That's not a valid comparison. I bought your software with the expectation that it would continue to work, even if I wasn't continuing to pay you.

Unfortunately more often than not the person who pays for the software is rarely the one who uses it. The end result is that software is purchased based on promises in the marketing material, not based on quality.

Thumbs up. Pay for your damn software.

I'm not so sure. Payed-for software can get unmaintained just as well. Companies go bust, are sold, or change direction for whatever reason. Paying for a product doesn't give you any guarantee either.

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

If I don't own a piece of software after purchase, I'm not spending a dime on it

Bingo. This is why it’s worth paying for. It’s more akin to paying for insurance than paying for software.

Really

The right amount of money to pay this company for their software is ZERO


Not at all. The rule doesn't state that paying for software guarantees that you're not still the product, just that if you're not paying for it, it's significantly more likely that the difference will be made up for somewhere else.

Your original seems to suggest that loss of revenue from software not working will be more severe for directly-paid software than for ad-supported software. It's not clear to me that's the case, especially given that some of the highest revenue software currently in use (consumer services from FB etc.) is ad-supported.

Anyway, this is tangential to this thread, so I won't go on about it.


People want cheap software, and that’s what they get.

The tradgedy of flawed paid software is the people who pay, and the people who use it are often different. Accepting this after seeing it is equivalent to saying "I am okay with trading misery for profit". That bit isnt a software problem, but its not a good look!

Another clear proof that you are easily fucked when you use proprietary softwares! The worse for users is to remember that they paid to be screwed like this.

This kind of treatment is what you get when you pay for software.

The customer is no longer right. Software is a zero-margin product (Stallman was right!) and monetizing it effectively means creating artificial friction for the user. All of the fatalist 90s predictions surrounding software licensing are coming true...
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