> 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable.
Which is probably why the apps on the App Store which offer both subscription and lifetime pricing tend to have the latter at about 3 times the cost of the former. But Little Snitch Mini does not offer that choice.
I’d be willing to pay more than 40$ for a one-time purchase of Little Snitch Mini, but there’s zero chance I’ll do it as a subscription.
Lifetime pricing / one-time purchases seem to be a double-edged sword for app sellers.
You satisfy users who are happy to pay a large amount upfront by they are also likely your most enthusiastic customers. So in essence they would be the customers who would probably pay more than 3 years of subscriptions over the period the lifetime payment covers.
Users who aren't that enthusiastic are more likely to not use the app for long periods and also unlikely to pay a large upfront cost.
Your most enthusiastic users are also the ones who help you get more users. They hype your app to others and get the less enthusiastic to buy or subscribe. So by not satisfying the most enthusiastic you’re denying one of the strongest word-of-mouth and recommendation channels, which also makes you lose the less enthusiastic.
Well, back in the day the FF devs said "no" to background-position-x and y in CSS (when we didn't had HTTP 2 and we used CSS sprites as a way to load websites faster by decreasing the number of connections).
My reaction was to "sabotage" FF users by prioritizing IE and Chrome and not actively testing my websites in FF, but only waiting until users reported bugs.
My thinking back in the day was: Why would I write N times more lines of code for a browser that had way less market share than Internet Explorer, especially when Chrome was faster and worked better?
By the time Firefox corrected course and prioritized parity with other browsers (ie. the -webkit fiasco), their market share was already an order of magnitude smaller.
15 years later, I don't feel proud of my actions, but my own conclusion is that every individual action added up. Now I feel sad to see Firefox with less than 3% market share because the damage is irreparable now.
Those are massively different scenarios. Off the top of my head:
- Mozilla doesn't derive its revenue directly from users.
- Mozilla is/was competing with a corporation with vastly more resources on every level. More engineering resources, ability to leverage other parts of its business to promote/favor Chrome, and fairly direct financial control over Mozilla.
- Mozilla's wrong moves aren't related to asking people to pay - they have at various times alienated or disappointed developers and end users.
Also worth noting that Firefox has artificially been blocked from competing on iOS (as has Chrome, but Google has its own mobile OS...) - so that's been a factor in their declining share that has little to nothing to do with their "neglecting" anybody.
There is value in advocates, but I'll say again: it tends to be overstated. And I hardly ever see self-professed enthusiastic users actually arguing for price increases / changes to support the development that generates the products.
It would be so refreshing to see self-professed enthusiastic users actually lobbying for people to pay for what they use instead of constantly tearing down companies trying to stay afloat.
I know the subscription model is a problem for end users as it spreads to more and more apps and services. The lifetime license model is a problem for the vendors. Especially for something like macOS where Apple releases a new OS every year. Right now shops that support macOS have to support like three macOS releases + two hardware architectures + the upcoming macOS.
Just how many users can an "enthusiastic user" convert to paid to make it worthwhile, if it ties the company's hands in terms of changing its revenue model as the world changes? Especially when that user is actively advocating against revenue?
It’s a tricky one. I feel like enthusiastic users’ recommendations (browser tabs!!) is what grew Firefox in the first place, but also what killed its market share as users became enthusiastic about Chrome instead (fast! crashes limited to one tab only!!).
These days, Firefox just isn’t better than it’s competition in ways that large numbers of people care about, alas. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any big cohort of users enthusiastic about any browser in particular right now. I doubt Mozilla can fix that easily. I think it’ll take the next revolution in browser tech (whatever that is).
Furthermore, people who paid a lifetime subscription are presumably less likely to switch to a competing product without a good reason, because they already paid for one.
I see both sides. This dilemma is capitalist hell.
Why is obdev sku-ifying their product? Because the incentive model for selling a license means that the market can saturate and there is a lack of recurring or stable income/income safety for the dev. In order to get new spikes of income, a new product is generated. If the market for a particular license becomes saturated, how will they make more money?
Licensed based sales incentivizes creation of new product and disincentivizes incremental improvements on already complete products.
On the other hand, subscription models incentivize rent seeking. If money is coming in, there is no reason to do more work. Income is not dependent in any way for work done, except maybe compatibility adjustments.
So a license is a wonderful model for the buyer and not so great for the seller. A subscription is awful for the buyer, but too good for the seller.
So what kind of payment method/pricing scheme, keeps the developer engaged in improving the product, but doesn't incentivize rent-seeking?
How would you price things if you were the seller?
A subscription model is not rent seeking. Most developers continue to work on their products and continue to provide customer support etc. If they don’t, you can simply stop paying your subscription.
The lifetime value per customer isn’t infinite either. Most people don’t use a single software forever. A subscription kinda slices the LTV up and puts a premium on it for long-term users. It is an increase in price, hence every company loves it, but this isn’t rent-seeking.
> If they don’t, you can simply stop paying your subscription.
No, you cannot, because you completely lose access to the app. If it outputs a proprietary file format (e.g. Adobe apps), your data becomes hostage to the subscription even if you do not need new features, can no longer afford the price, or the developer changes the terms.
I didn't say it is rent seeking, I said it incentivizes rent seeking. It incentivizes taking money without creation of new value. Subscriptions weaken the relationship between receiving money and creation of value. Money is received whether value is created or not.
You can look at the app store to see all kinds of rent-seekers, so it is happening. Not all subscriptions are rent seeking, but I have a hard time imagining how someone would rent seek without charging via subscription.
>So what kind of payment method/pricing scheme, keeps the developer engaged in improving the product, but doesn't incentivize rent-seeking?
We had that. And it worked for decades. Paid major updates. Users got support and bug fixes for their paid version and devs were hell motivated to add new features for the next update.
I'm not sure if the Jetbrains model backfired with the Ukraine war, considering most of the dev team was Russian and they decided to close the Russian offices.
I remember that the launch of the 2022 versions had a drop in quality, I don't remember when was the last time I had crashes in a Jetbrains product, but with the launch of 2022 versions crashes occurred on a daily basis to the point I really considered cancelling my subscription, and I activated for the first time the option to block updates in Jetbrains Toolbox.
Months later they launched their promotion to keep the current pricing for 3 more years and I renewed. I acknowledge that promotion was a genius move by them, but I'm unsure if that promotion was a result of a drop in income for them.
I like this post. It is honest. Are you OK with no upgrades and no new features? That is one advantage to the subscription / cloud-y model. That said, I agree with your sentiment. I usually stay away from subscription products.
Which is probably why the apps on the App Store which offer both subscription and lifetime pricing tend to have the latter at about 3 times the cost of the former. But Little Snitch Mini does not offer that choice.
I’d be willing to pay more than 40$ for a one-time purchase of Little Snitch Mini, but there’s zero chance I’ll do it as a subscription.