Programming @programming.dev FlumPHP @programming.dev 1y ago

Introducing ONCE, a new line of software products from 37signals: Pay one time, own forever.

Once upon a time you owned what you paid for, you controlled what you depended on, and your privacy and security were your own business. We think it’s that time again.

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1y ago

37signals Introduces Once – One time payment software

once.com

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Actually owning something you buy has become a selling point. Think about that for a minute.
- This person is feeling the dystopia
  
  Contract law is powerful like that. Daddy tells you the deal, you take it when you use the product and/or service and now he can fuck ur waifu.
  
  You signed her away in these here T&Cs.
...What are they actually launching though? I mean I love the payment scheme but I can't get excited over this without an actual good product being sold.
- Products!
  
  For business!
- Watch it be some rebranded existing FOSS product 😂
- Pretty sure they're going to be handling the zombo.com nft sales
- J A B B E R W O C K E Y
  
  That show had so much promise. I wish it would have survived.
I don’t want to pay once and own it forever, I want to pay once and then in a few years when it’s gotten buggy or incompatible or whatever I pay you some more money for an upgrade. If I use it a lot maybe I pay you more often, if I use it rarely maybe I pay less often, if I’ve got a lot of bills this month maybe I put it off a few months.

That’s really it - I’ll happily give you more money occasionally if I keep using it, but the burden of stretching that revenue so that you can make your payroll every 2 weeks ought to fall on you, not on me, and if you sit on your ass and barely make any changes for a year I shouldn’t be stuck paying you the same monthly fee while you do that.
- I am with this person.
  
  You're their waifu? Watch for the T&Cs.
- I agree with you on this. Lifetime licenses are great, but not feasible for some software. Anything that needs to be constantly updated needs steady income for developers. But, if their updates don't provide anything that you need then you should be able to keep using the version you are on for no additional money.
- JetBrains did similar with their perpetual fallback license and it did ok. My only gripe with their strategy was it required either the upfront year paid or at the end of 12 months of month to month you would get the license. Issue was the license was from the first month so you would have to go downgrade. I like your idea way more
- This: comparing something you buy once, with a license does not make a lot of sense. In SaaS, you get update, support, etc. For something critical, I'd rather get that than something that I buy once and may be buggued in the future.
"In the early 2000s, we were among the early pioneers leading the industry into the SaaS revolution. Now, 20 years later, we intend to help lead the way out. The post–SaaS era is just around the corner."

So, this company helped to get us into this whole subscription thing, and now they're going to be the white knights to save us from it?
- Yep, create the problem to sell the solution
  
  Why stop there? By spending an extra $15 every month you get the new, updated software every time it launches!
- It would have happened anyway.
  
  IT, and other industries have the same seasons like fashion.
  
  Oh, look, it's the turtleneck season again!
  
  And people forget it's happened many times before, and act like it's something new every time.
  
  Kinda miss the semi-futuristic 80s and 90s though. Give me those grey boxes and neon lights again!
I love that no one has a clue if there is in fact anything for sale, or what it might be.
- Maybe a software lootbox. So you get a random surprise software, which is worse and more outdated than those on CDs you had glued to magazines.
I mean, I get it, but there's value in paying for support and updates, and it's untenable for an organization to do that for free. I'm optimistic for software running under this model, I'd 1000% love to go back to the pay once per major version model, but "pay once forever" software leaves some unanswered questions.
- First question: the fuck are they actually making? They’re so vague about everything except how to pay.
  
  They'll tell you after you pay them
  
  Typical DHH bullshit. He likes to be contrarian but he never actually follows through.
  
  He’s a little removed and both Ruby on Rails and the world endurance championship would be better off without him.
- Right. I have boxes full of software I bought once, and I have the license to use it forever. But it's for Windows XP or older. I'd need emulators or WINE to run it now, and it's not really worth it. For some of it I even paid for a "lifetime" of updates, but that stops working out when they stop updating it. I apparently live a lot longer than 90s and 2000s software companies. Just let me pay for major versions again with a guarantee of updates for X years, and price it according to those expectations.
  
  37Signals is the company that made Basecamp, and they talk about hosting the software yourself, so presumably they are writing web software that would often be SaaS and letting you host it. So it's great that you'll be able to get it for one time purchase. But it definitely needs updates, as libraries change versions, new security flaws are uncovered, obviously for bugs, etc. Buying web application software is only as useful as the length of the updates included. Them providing the source is better, but since that's not open source exactly a community couldn't really work together to continue updates themselves.
  
  I apparently live a lot longer than 90s and 2000s software companies.
  
  In business lingo, that makes you an immortal.
- I think there were probably times where software that got shipped actually worked. So you bought it and you could use it, no need for "maintenance". I generally don't think that's the right word since software doesn't decay on its own, so there's nothing to "maintain" actively. Apart from compatibility of course, but if that breaks (e.g. with newer OS or hardware), it would make sense to pay for an update if you need it. Makes a lot more sense than those disgusting subscription scams that adobe is pulling off (and every other company seems to follow).
  
  There were still bugs. You just learned how to deal with them or work around them.
Few thoughts:

What is being made? Can't really care about it without having some idea

What makes this company's version of it worth our interest?

How is it better than the FOSS solutions that in this day and age almost definitely already exist

Why are we to put our faith in this group for pay once software when their two major products are SaaS?
What is the point of this and why is this being posted?
- 37Signals, the company that made Basecamp, is really good at getting news. They're a really small company (less than 30 ppl), but the owners are all big in marketing. So they write books about culture and how to run a business, as well as how to get attention.
  
  This post is again, them finding a way to get attention.
  
  I neither like or dislike 37Signals. I think theyre neat. But I also read their books like it's fantasy, as they are telling the business world how to run their companies while also being such a tiny entity.
Can someone enlighten me as to when this magical period of time was supposed to have been? As far as I can remember (end of the 80s), proprietary software never had any source available and always had an EULA stating that you don't actually own anything. Best you could get was usage rights which were revocable for arbitrary reasons. So I'm a bit confused as to what they are talking about.
- Right. Even pay-once software can have a phone home component that disables it if the creator deems it. So really we're talking about old versions of software that just used offline license keys which were easily cracked.
  
  I honestly really like the Jetbrains model where they offer a subscription for continual updates but you also get a fallback version you can use forever if you decide to stop paying. It acknowledges that you aren't costing them money if you aren't getting the new updates.
  
  I came across a similar pricing model for Prodigy, and it does seem like a sensible option. You pay for updates, but will always be able to use the versions you already have in perpetuity.
Sure, but can I:

use the software as I like to?

see how it works and adapt it to better fit my needs?

lend it to my friend to help him?

pay someone else to improve this software?
So zero idea of what their software will be? 😂

SaaS serves a purpose that single purchase software doesn’t. There is room for both to exist.
do I get updates? I own word 97, I'm not thrilled I can still use it..

also, what is it?!
My money's on them selling PS2 demo discs
You know… after the fiasco that literally forced them to rename the company, I’m good
Arr… owning stuff is the good thing.
FOSS > ONCE > SaaS

ONCE is a comprimize but it is not an ideal. I would rather have true freedom to use software as I wish.
- well sure, as a user FOSS is ideal, but as a developer it's not ideal you're not getting paid for your software...
  
  Just paying a developer once for software you use seems like a decent compromise
Ya'll remember Windows, right? I know Microsoft catches all the shade when it comes to FOSS, but you know, it had this same model: 3.1, 95, 98, SE, 2001, XP, 8, 10... And to this day that is why you have industrial machinery run on windows 98. Buy it once. It's yours.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that anymore. Products have to work in an ecosystem now. When MS got slammed with anti-trust cases, it forced the ecosystem out into the open, for better or worse, and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle. Sure, pay for it once, own it. But that kind of payment model doesn't congeal with our way of life anymore. Five years from now, are you gonna be able to use whatever the fuck this company is selling with whatever is just released on the market? Not if you haven't paid the company to provide 5 years worth of updates.

So, yeah, celebrate your nostalgic payment system and throw your money away on a product that will be obsolete before it pays for itself.
- It's not like you own your Windows copy though - you are not allowed to do anything with it you want.
  You have to use free - as in freedom - software, like provided by gnu.org
  
  In fact, you agree by accepting the EULA that you do not, in fact, own anything and that Microsoft can revoke the right to use their software at any time.

56 comments