@wiljames @treehousedarren The numbers matter because numbers are literally the only thing that matters when it comes to doing business. Everything else is courtesy, and lifetime licenses have always been and will always be completely unsustainable. Licenses, especially software licenses, become not perpetual all the time, and they always have. Companies might grandfather previous purchases in if it makes financial sense to do so, but in a case like this where literally your entire market probably has a previous purchase, this is literally impossible to do if you want the software to survive and continue to be developed. And people being upset about this or demanding that everything just accommodate the world view that says this is about bargains or handshakes or keeping a promise or any of that stuff doesn't change any of this.
Tech Singer (tweesecake.social)
@acarson @wiljames @treehousedarren I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear. Of course, all that matters in business is the numbers. My point is that people seem to be saying that the price originally paid was low, and therefore the moving of previous purchasers to a subscription doesn’t matter. They also seem to be saying that the price of the subscription is not unreasonable, and therefore the moving of previous purchasers to a subscription doesn’t matter. Both the price being low originally and the reasonableness of the subscription are legally irrelevant. That’s all I meant, I didn’t mean that the numbers didn’t matter for the company, of course they do. The argument I’m trying to head off is the emotional one that “we paid a low price so there is some sort of moral need to pay more”. Similarly, I want to head off the emotional argument that “the subscription is reasonably priced and therefore the breech of contract should be somehow forgiven”. That’s all I meant by the numbers not mattering, they matter to the customer emotionally but not rationally and I’m trying to make sure the more emotional arguments don’t bleed into reasoned judgments. There have been allot of emotional arguments about caring about the community, that developers need to eat, that the business is just interested in money… I just want to avoid this thread descending into those. Again, sorry I wasn’t clear.
@acarson @wiljames @treehousedarren I have asked this several times of several people, and have not received an answer, I’d be most grateful for it. You state that companies will sometimes grandfather older customers with software when switching to a subscription model. Can you give me any example of software which runs entirely on the user’s machine, which switched to a subscription model, and for which the older customers were not grandfathered in with the ability to continue to run the version of the software they had bought with all its features? As I said, I have never seen this, not once. It’s not sometimes, it is simply always, without any exception I know of. Let me be clear, companies will often refuse to update their software if customers don’t switch to a subscription. They will often refuse to support their software if you don’t subscribe. They will often say that software will not be maintained to work with new systems, or their own services, if you don’t subscribe. All that is fine. That’s not what I’m talking about. I have yet to see a single example of a company which removes working features from working software when that software was sold originally as a lifetime license. It’s not only possible that I’m wrong, it’s likely, and I would be very grateful for correction because this is something completely new in my experience apart from the death of the owner or bankruptcy. I think it’s new to me because nobody else has done it, and nobody else has done it because it’s a flagrant breech of the legal contract formed when the customer purchased a license. I would appreciate correction if I’m wrong, either about that last point or about any company actually having done this before.