Every other business has figured out a way to operate on a single transaction model where I give them money and they give me a product and that is the end of our relationship until I need something else that they make. Somehow we have managed to operate in this manner for hundreds of years. Why is software development any different?
1. bug fixes and updates
2. Services to work in the "cloud"
If you bought a piece of software, received precisely that version and never got updates, and didn't expect your data to magically follow you around, then we could have that model, as evidenced by that model working well back when software largely did work that way.
If I bought Adobe Photoshop I expect the OS to fix anything change they might have made that broke Photoshop. This is how it used to work. (Ho, ho, the Mac OS source base was well known to have workarounds to keep, for example, Microsoft products running.)
I can manage my own documents cloud.
Affinity got my money for years for not having a subscription strategy. (And for their apps being pretty badass.)
Software used to work like this. You'd pay for a shrink-wrapped product, and the only updates you'd ever get (if you're lucky) would be for major bugfixes.
Subscriptions have gotten ridiculous, but with the way we've come to expect frequent updates the pay-once model isn't sustainable for many products.
Okay, well I don't want most of the updates I get for most of the software I've paid for. I often cancel subscriptions due to unwanted updates. Spotify was a good app once upon a time, but it sucks now. If I could pay to use the old version, I would, but Spotify won't let me because they think they know better.
Additionally, shipped software used to not need too many updates most of the time, because the expectation was that the thing you bought was the thing, and any updates would be to address major defects in the product. Now, most software is delivered in "MVP" form where it doesn't even have all the features most users would want, and they get slowly dripped in over time, or they don't, and you never get the thing you originally wanted from the software at all.
Overall I think this has been mainly a loss for consumers. Security is better, and that's a real win, but frequently updated software is usually lower quality software, because it can be.
My water heater once emitted a cryptic warning light. I called a local contractor, the person came and spent 10 seconds inspected the appliance, then start dialing the appliance vendor's support number. Support asked him to press some buttons in a fixed sequence and the tiny display on the water heater showed an error code. Support said "yeah, that means part X is not working, but we don't know why" and the solution was replacing that part entirely.
"Wouldn't it be nice if the water heater comes with hundreds of sensors monitoring each part and emit metrics? You can diagnose with historical data and see what was working and at what time which part showed anomaly". As a person doing SRE in my day job, this was what I had in my mind at the time.
I am not saying that I want spyware in all the appliances in my house. But if I am an appliance manufacturer, I would always want the capability to manage appliances just like how software engineers managing software lifecycles.
That might work if the software platform vendors kept compatibility with old versions, but they're quite poor at this. Windows used to be quite good at it, but Android and iOS are really bad at it, and macOS is not a lot better.
Software is, unfortunately, a living thing and when not actively maintain bit-rots and becomes unusable.
It's not. Software subscriptions are a relatively new thing. For a long time before this madness came around, software companies made money hand-over-fist by just selling software in the normal way.
"I don't need a receipt for the donut, I'll just give you some money, you give me the donut. End of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this."
Because your fucking bananas aren't connected to servers in a datacenter that require you to pay monthly bills and engineers need to get paid more than people stacking rocks for living.
As evidenced by Rent-a-Center, automobile leases, and rental properties there are plenty of non-software businesses that cater to customers who prefer a subscription to a larger one-time transaction.
> Why is software development any different?
I think it's a combination of price-sensitivity and desire for internet-connected features. For example, MS Office 2010 Home was $150 in 2010 (which is ~$230 today due to inflation) and it looks like you can buy subscription-less MS Office 2024 Home for $180. But despite the price coming down in real terms, many people opt for the Microsoft 365 subscription for ~$10/month.
