You Will Own Nothing and Be (un)happy
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The article discusses the erosion of ownership in the digital world, where users are forced into subscription-based models, and the discussion revolves around the implications of this trend on user freedom and control.
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I think we should strive to avoid playing this game..
But in the end i feel in this particular case, it’s ops fault. He can avoid using that app there’s a world of alternatives for writing apps and organizing apps.
Let's say you publish a blog post guide on how to set up a MySql cluster and I use that as part of DevOps contract work for a company. Do I owe you money?
What if I form an opinion because of a political piece you published then produce my own blog post?
AI use of public data to produce new information is exactly what we do as people.
I mean the degree of use or exchange should matter.
I gave an example of where I'm using your info for my benefit in a different community.
Why does it matter that AI is in the same community, doesn't that actually help my argument because its information is more public?
A third party coming in and saying "hey, everybody stop talking to each other, just talk to us and we'll intermediate and eventually replace every interaction between you, and charge money for it, and fill it up with advertising and eventual enshittification" is not aligned with my goals there at all.
No one is forcing us to exclusively provide information to AI
AI isn't the sole source of information nor are you forced to use it.
The internet is already full of advertising and shit
I mean, it's now embedded in all our search engines, so it's kind of hard to obtain information without invoking the hallucination-generating machine
It's like pre installed apps or forced browsers, they cause a pushback where the arguments are all monopolistic but the reality is user annoyance.
Parent said:
> A third party coming in and saying "hey, everybody stop talking to each other, just talk to us and we'll intermediate and eventually replace every interaction between you, and charge money for it
which doesn't seem to be the case in forums and message boards.
3rd parties can still come in and try to offer value. But they can not sit between your interactions as clients are interchangeable
Things that come to mind:
- adding 'account required' screens so information is harder to access
- harvesting/selling that ip without your explicit consent (although you agreed in the TCs)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886131
Only in private. Copyright law can give the owner exclusive rights to perform a song publicly. If the lawyers can convince a judge that your singing counts as a public performance you can end up on the hook for not getting or being covered under a performance license.
https://lawwithmiller.com/blogs/copyrights/cover-me-im-legal...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_quote
I think your copyright argument is focused on media, like music. This appears be a specific exception that applies to text. Music sampling for example is a direct copy of the recording but quoting text, even though it's a copy, is a new work because although the words are the same it's not the original copied (as in the quote is written or typed by OpenAI).
Because if you ask for an opinion on a subject it generates new information itself based on the data gathered.
It does sometimes quote sources, which are properly noted and attributed, but how is that wrong? People write books (for money) all the time and reference sources.
I'm not understanding why you think the LLM is different from a person in how it uses information to produce new work.
(is fully closed source software development even still a thing? is there any popular propriatary programming language / editor / runtime / ecosystem?)
Copyleft free software licenses such as the GPL explicitly grant anyone the right to use the software for any purpose, as long as they also extend this right to their own software. The intent of this license was to infect any novel software built upon GPL-licensed software, forcing it to become free as well; in practice any organization who wants to build a proprietary app or service simply avoids GPL dependencies (or blatantly violates the license terms). Empirically, software companies care more about avoiding being forced to release the source code of their own proprietary software more than they care about using the exclusively-GPL'd software commons as a dependency, and this isn't a problem the license itself can solve.
Conclusion is that gpl but only for non-commercial does not work. They need to use a different license to get something self-consistent.
I don't think it's that bad. Most commercial enterprises don't want their commercial products to be under GPL terms, so they'll pay for the license regardless. You should really fix the SaaS loophole by using AGPL instead though.
I'd suggest using AGPL instead of just GPL.
However Visual Studio and Xcode are closed source and still popular in some circles.
Most people will still be relying on open source libraries while using those platforms though.
I'm genuinely asking. I'm (finally) making my own app without the VC crap, and my best-case scenario is to sell for a fixed price with no plans to upgrade/upsell later. But the app isn't yours, no, since I'll have to deal with the servers/support/admin/taxes on my end. You're buying a license to use it. Is that not ok?
The problem with paid upfront and paid upgrades was that it eventually resulted in bloated programs because the only way to continue having a business was to add features.
Subscriptions, in theory, could leave the focus on user experience and fixing bugs, because in the end the people who are paying are those that like your product as it is now.
Now of course this optimism was misplaced. Subscriptions permitted to move as much of the logic as possible out into cloud.
> Subscriptions permitted to move as much of the logic as possible out into cloud.
Constant internet connection permitted that. Cloud is only a convenience: you don't have to install and update anything locally, it is updated centrally for everyone by knowledgeable admins instead of some users having problems locally and needing support for each upgrade.
I know this from experience, one company has a local desktop version of our product, but they complain that it requires work from administrator, because users can't upgrade their desktop clients automatically, so they want local-hosted webpage version. This is SCADA system for district heating.
Normal internet users don't want to deal with local-hosted own servers, they want to press a button and it should work. Cloud based systems make that a little more possible.
On a technical level yes. But unless you are selling expensive hardware widgets it can be hard to justify constant upkeep cost of servers without a recurring revenue.
That said I too lived through hosting on premises web services that we later pushed to cloud due to the hassle of maintenance. Self hosting is great when you have a dedicated team to keep it running.
We can build today complete products with nothing paid on the tools. This was NOT the case 30 years ago.
I would also reconsider HW manufacturer that tries to push Newspeak "side-loading" instead of "installing".
In that world nobody should ever ever sell a lifetime license, it's a huge responsibility with strictly limited upside. Imo "Use the current-ish version forever" is the only reasonable expectation, and that's a fair trade.
It's expectations like this that drive subscription models. People do (quite reasonably) want ongoing support and updates, but that takes continual work, so the only way to make that possible is to somehow provide ongoing funding.
I have since gotten Mediamonkey 4 and Mediamonkey 2024.
Unfortunately I don't like the 2024 refresh, but I can use it if I want to. I would also be completely happy if they just did maintenance/bugfixes on the original version.
I don't know when the OP bought his app, but the pricing page from a year ago doesn't say anything about the lifetime purchase being a subscription at all, much less a subscription that includes every new feature in perpetuity.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240712162421/https://www.goodn...
Not really, perpetuities have existed for a long time in finance, even longer has the concept of ‘time value of money’ existed.
You can turn $3m in revenue today into a US treasury bond portfolio that delivers $120k a year. That’s enough to pay for maintenance and minor development of new features.
You can also say: I’ll just charge 120k a year in fees infinitely. But it has the same present value (see time value of money) as 3m today. These worlds are interchangeable, only in the upfront world there is no risk that some of your customers walk away at some point making further upkeep untenable for the remaining customers.
Updates should be free, but upgrades don't have to. That's how it worked with software previously. Sometimes you could buy older version of e.g. Office used, and that part we lost with downloads and app stores.
The app store model just sucks for every one. Developers needs to resort to subscriptions, because upgrade pricing isn't supported. Consumers are confused, because why are there multiple versions of the same software?
One issue I do see in this case is that Goodnotes aren't offering a subscription free alternative. That might be due to the AI feature. If that isn't running on device, then that's a recurring cost they placed on themselves.
This dark pattern has completely taken over the iOS ecosystem. Apps hide the fact that they’re paid until you’ve gone through several steps—registration, login, setup—making you believe the what you downloaded it for is just one the next screen. And then, bang, a paywall! with a “generous” 3-day free trial and a $3.99/week subscription.
I uninstall such apps immediately and leave a one-star review. I get it, devs need to make money, but there are better ways than this sleazy bs. Unfortunately, too many gurus have normalized this practice by constantly bragging how much revenue they are making.
That's your decision. I've published an music album on Bandcamp. You can buy it, I'll send you a real physical tape and you can _download_ high quality FLAC you own then.
If you like to own things, you have all the possibilities.
But I agree, we maybe tend to forget about high quality stuff, if we consume conveniently low quality streaming content for example on Spotify.
> You don’t really own your apps, your music, or even your tools anymore
This is the more general statement, once again, alternatives exist. I own almost all my apps and tools, and 100% of my music. Either because they are free, or because I bought them. Sometimes I’d would be easier to go the other way, but it’s still (mostly) a choice.
If I have a working binary that does not need internet, it cannot become a subscription.
If I have invested in making open source solutions work, then I can also figure out ways to continue to own my tools, even if the company goes the subscription way.
"binary that does not need internet"
(Also I like working offline when I can. Less distractions.)
Pluton chip and signature/attestation requirements have entered the chat.
And there are also tons with no forced or any AI (though plugins by the community kinda to show that many users do want AI)
I can not copy and redestribute copies. I can not play it in public spaces for an audience with further ado, etc.
The concept of owning is, rightfully, changing. We are a lot of people who use this planet, and the purist view of ownership simply does not make sense.
You can not own a part of a river to dump chemicals, just for thst to flow to the next owner down stream.
Ah that can of worms. When i would play music out loud in the office, the company has to pay a fee to the copyright reimbursement foundation and a fee to the same system representing the artists (actually the studios, but semantics). And that would be for every employee no matter who heard it and if it was audible in public spaces they count for the max allowable. And that comes on top of the fee I'm already paying (double tax, yay). There is a reason most companies pretend they don't know about this system or ask you to use your own devices and headphones.
There were many employees of APRA doing this, in every state, and many cease+desist/lawsuits.
The case was clear cut - you play the music, you paid a fee.
https://www.apraamcos.com.au/
(I guess many countries have similar organisations)
This is a bizarre statement. On the one hand, property rights are considered a fundamental human right, and for good reason. And on the other, digital goods don't take up space - no matter how many copies exist. What bearing does the number of people on the planet have in light of this?
All I see is excuses for exploitation by our corporate overlords.
Bandcamp is a real treasure for this reason. It and buying physical CDs are the only ways I buy music anymore. Streaming is for suckers.
Yes, things are messed up, FSF is just some fringe radical micro-organisation with no real power, open source movement get EEE'd by the likes of MS, hardware is locked down, your always online games stop working the moment their publishers deem them unprofitable, so what are we doing now?
The solution is quite simple and practical.
* Install Fdroid.
* Do not pay some silly rent for apps.
... but do consider donating to the maintainers/contributors of the libre apps, if you can.
Lobby politicians to regulate the software and hardware industries.
[1] https://onejailbreak.com/blog/stikdebug-ios/
> I bought the previous “lifetime” version of the app, but for WHAT, since I have to pay for the subscription to access the newest features.
Yeah, that's how "ownership" works. When you own something, nobody else changes it–for better or worse–out from under you.
That is certainly not a requirement for "ownership", no.
> And, if you stop paying after you "upgraded" the license, you lose access to the thing you bought?
What part of "nobody else changes it–for better or worse–out from under you" is unclear?
For software I wouldn't expect new features but bug fixes seem almost legislatable.
You would buy a product, and it would give you access to the thing you purchased at that version number plus a number of versions afterwards. Pass that point, you needed to buy it again. I think it is a good compromise between "I own the thing I paid" and "I have to give lifetime support for people who purchase an item once many years ago"
In the little software business I have been working towards creating, my desire was to offer a educational product for aspiring programmers as a monthly subscription.
Then, once the subscription product is paying the bills and successful, create a single seat offline version of the software and sell that as a package with a book. The book would be a user's guide for the programming language with fun example programs to type in suitable for families and schools who don't have internet to connect to my site.
I have planned networking and sharing features for the online edition that the offline book edition wouldn't have, so there'd be an incentive to pay the subscription to get all that. Nevertheless, I feel an offline version should be made available with a perpetual license in case my company dies, taking the website and web-based programming environment with it and leaving people with nothing.
I think I'd settle for a well-documented plugin API? This used to be more or less the dominant model before everything moved to the cloud
Install F-Droid.
Have a wide array of apps that are free as in beer as well as in freedom.
You don't have to use rent-seeking proprietary junk. There's alternatives out there.
Now even hardware things that used to work for decades need apps. Some guitar pedals need apps to operate. The first generation of those has already become paper weight: after Digitech was bought by Samsung, all the app servers died.
Apps that need a server are never for my behalf, they are purely for creating a dependency. The real feature is allowing an actual backup of the data.
Streaming has the even worse issues. It promises to pay creators, but after listening to only two bands in a month, as an experiment, no visible fraction of the $10 didn’t went to neither of those bands. It probably went to some major label, of course.
I am 100% disillusioned on anything touched by tech and see piracy as a way to resist this crap. So far only piracy has been reliable in having things work as they should when they should.
In my student years I used DC++ just to watch free movies. With the rise of streaming I kind of forgot about it, until I got annoyed.
I don't like the Spotify. Most songs I like are available, but the 'playlist' experience is terrible. A lot of songs are actually part of an album. "Is an album like a playlist on a disk?" my kid asked. No it's not, a playlist is a randomly assembled list of songs, but an album are songs who belong together, they are the album.
And video streaming is the opposite. The experience is nice, but there is so much missing even if you have multiple streaming subscriptions.
Besides convenience there is politics, what if Trump wants a list of everyone who thumbed up 'The White House Effect' on Netflix?
So, after many years I took an old Raspberry 3 and started torrenting again. To my surprise piratebay is still active (although my old account doesn't work anymore, no clue how to provide new content).
I'm really happy, the Raspberry has a Samba fileshare. Just download the VLC app on your smart tv and you can stream anything you like.
I know there are more advanced solutions to torrenting, but I like this simple approach, and it makes me completely independent. Let's start sharing great content again!
In Germany we can't really torrent from home, so those sites are very widespread. People just watch stuff at work during lunch, after hours when waiting for a colleague to finish, etc...
I'm not gonna pay for Amazon because it's Amazon, or Disney because it's Disney. And I'm about to kill my Netflix, since it's also complains about Apple Private Relay which I'm not gonna turn off as much as I also hate Apple.
Funny enough, even the CTO of a past company I worked was back into piracy, even after his company had a successful exit. People are just tired of those services, period.
Companies own you - they pay a subscription (your salary) to rent you. Wouldn't it be great if they could pay a one-time fee to own you forever?
They rent my work, not me, and if I am paid for project or contract work, they get to keep what I made after they've stopped paying me.
Side note: I'm not such a fan of FOSS, free for all get it here no conditions and no questions asked, when we're actually just giving away our mind for free. That's fine as long as others reciprocate, but many don't. The few who reciprocate might be worth it. In essence you're trading between minds, which is the payoff then, not the money.
I'm not for or against, just thinking out loud.
Matching different payment models is pretty common in business, not some weird thing that only applies to software. A buffet takes a fixed price per customer, and tries to match it to the actual amount of food the average customer eats. A bank (at least in pre-fiat currency) takes money for short unpredictable periods of time and lends it out for long fixed periods. A hotel takes a variable price per night and matches it to their fixed cost of rent, maintenance and cleaning. An ISP takes a fixed monthly fee, and tries to match it to how much data transfer the customer causes and where the data is flowing. An airline takes a variable price per customer and matches it to their largely-fixed cost of flying the plane. And these new-age software companies take a fixed monthly fee per user and match it to a one-time development cost.
There was the original domestication, and then there's the modern industrial process of plantation management, picking, shipping, and distribution.
All of which has to be invented, implemented, and organised.
You can - and probably should - question the ethics of same.
But that doesn't change the fact that most places that want bananas do not have have bananas, and making bananas happen in non-banana locations is a very complex process.
Good ideas and organisational ability don't grow on trees.
Just stop using proprietary software, as it is never possible to own it no matter how much money you pay.
FOSS solves every software need I have, and likely for most people that choose to invest in learning it.
Today alone I payed something like 20% extra because I didn’t want to download an app to pay for parking (other parking places won’t even accept payment without the app) and I had to download a closed source app to activate a sim card.
Generally I only carry cash, a mechanical watch, and an ID.
For banking I use webapps.
For parking I choose lots that accept cash even if I have to walk a bit more.
Never stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do in the SF Bay Area.
Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard, sometimes I give up and order it online. But the more people do this the more it will (continue to) be a supported use-case.
I've had some interesting conversations, interacting with people in the real world, just by going into a store and telling them I'm trying to find a thing. I tell them what game I'm playing, they're usually pleased to hear it and happy to help if they can.
I'm too busy right now, but I think my medium-term plan is to get a local bank and just use them locally like the old days. I'm stuck on iPhone for a variety of reasons, but I'd still like to get my app count down as much as possible. Plus if my phone falls into a river I'll still be able to do my banking. I think the convenience hit will be worth it.
I basically firewall stuff like the bank apps and other stuff on my phone. My PC for the most part is just Debian Linux and my car is an older vehicle that can be literally repaired indefinitely due to it being more utilitarian.
I co-run two tech companies in silicon valley, maintain several online communities, organize events, have an active social life, travel a lot, have many tech hobbies, go to shows and events, etc.
I am hardly the amish person people tend to imagine.
FOSS software can work for virtually anyone in the modern world that wants freedom.
So maybe 5% of the population on a good day.
If you think this is something anyone can Just Do if they decide to do it, you have fallen pretty hard for a certain kind of capitalist propaganda.
everyone who is able to dedicate some spare time to it
They rest on their laurels, enjoy the increased cash flow, say it allows them to work on regular updates. But this goes from being useful bug fixes, to merely shuffling the UI around, changing the fonts, introducing nonsensical features nobody asked for or can make use of, and gutting useful features for "streamlining" purposes... while longstanding bugs that actually need fixing are still unfixed.
Eventually customers become dissatisfied with the product and make up for lost features and degraded user experience with a smörgåsbord of perpetually licensed or FOSS alternatives from various competitors because they too will want to improve their cash-flow instead of being bled dry every month.
Companies that choose to offer lump-sum permanent licenses have to make a bigger effort to convince customers to upgrade, which means the product improves. Also it makes your customers more committed to your product. You should invite this kind of challenge and forgo the temptation to boost cash-flow because it keeps you on your toes. Subscription-only will seem great for a while but eventually you'll atrophy and fail.
Something similar happened when software went from being released on CDs/DVDs to regular patches and downloads. Not saying we need to go back to that era, but QAs had to work harder back then because distribution was expensive. Nowadays you can release things in an unfinished and broken state.
Now, they're often dreaded, pushy, and frequent.
Not anymore, and it shows
Look at how bad Adobe Acrobat got before they even started thinking about subscriptions.
This explains a lot about why subscriptions have become the norm.
There's really no excuse if you're talking about notes.
I just wish the file sharing things didn't feel so entrenched. I think it's only a matter of time before Dropbox becomes unavailable or no longer offers a free plan (plus it's already restricted to 2 or 3 devices). Using Apple's thing feels unnatural on my Windows PC, using Microsoft's feels unnatural on my Apple devices, using Google's feels like it would require a separate app on every device and you'd still end up in the (imo unnatural feeling) web interface a lot.
I always say that "Privacy is for Nerds", guess I can start adding Ownership as well.
That’s why we built ChannelVault (https://mestr.io/channelvault.html), as a desktop app (made with Wails + Go) to archive and search Slack workspaces locally for eDiscovery and backups. No SaaS, no recurring fees, no cloud dependency. It just runs on your computer and keeps your data with you. Trying to defy that general trend.
I miss when software felt like something you actually owned, not rented month to month.
it's like every "innovation" now brings with it convenience at a higher cost and takes away ownership and often features
personally i'm quite sick of digital nothingness. its all transient.
i want to get more into real world things that have texture, weight and permanence.
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