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Go 1.22, SQLite, and Next.js: The "Boring" Back End

https://mohammedeabdelaziz.github.io/articles/go-next-pt-2
1•mohammede•2m ago•0 comments

Laibach the Whistleblowers [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Mx2mxpaCY
1•KnuthIsGod•3m ago•0 comments

I replaced the front page with AI slop and honestly it's an improvement

https://slop-news.pages.dev/slop-news
1•keepamovin•7m ago•1 comments

Economists vs. Technologists on AI

https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/p/economists-vs-technologists-on-ai
1•econlmics•9m ago•0 comments

Life at the Edge

https://asadk.com/p/edge
1•tosh•15m ago•0 comments

RISC-V Vector Primer

https://github.com/simplex-micro/riscv-vector-primer/blob/main/index.md
2•oxxoxoxooo•19m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Invoxo – Invoicing with automatic EU VAT for cross-border services

2•InvoxoEU•19m ago•0 comments

A Tale of Two Standards, POSIX and Win32 (2005)

https://www.samba.org/samba/news/articles/low_point/tale_two_stds_os2.html
2•goranmoomin•23m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is the Downfall of SaaS Started?

3•throwaw12•24m ago•0 comments

Flirt: The Native Backend

https://blog.buenzli.dev/flirt-native-backend/
2•senekor•26m ago•0 comments

OpenAI's Latest Platform Targets Enterprise Customers

https://aibusiness.com/agentic-ai/openai-s-latest-platform-targets-enterprise-customers
1•myk-e•29m ago•0 comments

Goldman Sachs taps Anthropic's Claude to automate accounting, compliance roles

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/anthropic-goldman-sachs-ai-model-accounting.html
2•myk-e•31m ago•4 comments

Ai.com bought by Crypto.com founder for $70M in biggest-ever website name deal

https://www.ft.com/content/83488628-8dfd-4060-a7b0-71b1bb012785
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•32m ago•1 comments

Big Tech's AI Push Is Costing More Than the Moon Landing

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-spending-tech-companies-compared-02b90046
4•1vuio0pswjnm7•34m ago•0 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•36m ago•0 comments

Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8dcFhF0Dlk
1•askl•38m ago•2 comments

Ask HN: How are researchers using AlphaFold in 2026?

1•jocho12•40m ago•0 comments

Running the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Compiler

https://spawn-queue.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3786614
1•devooops•45m ago•0 comments

Watermark API – $0.01/image, 10x cheaper than Cloudinary

https://api-production-caa8.up.railway.app/docs
1•lembergs•47m ago•1 comments

Now send your marketing campaigns directly from ChatGPT

https://www.mail-o-mail.com/
1•avallark•50m ago•1 comments

Queueing Theory v2: DORA metrics, queue-of-queues, chi-alpha-beta-sigma notation

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/queueing-theory
1•jph•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hibana – choreography-first protocol safety for Rust

https://hibanaworks.dev/
5•o8vm•1h ago•1 comments

Haniri: A live autonomous world where AI agents survive or collapse

https://www.haniri.com
1•donangrey•1h ago•1 comments

GPT-5.3-Codex System Card [pdf]

https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/23eca107-a9b1-4d2c-b156-7deb4fbc697c/GPT-5-3-Codex-System-Card-02.pdf
1•tosh•1h ago•0 comments

Atlas: Manage your database schema as code

https://github.com/ariga/atlas
1•quectophoton•1h ago•0 comments

Geist Pixel

https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-geist-pixel
2•helloplanets•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP to get latest dependency package and tool versions

https://github.com/MShekow/package-version-check-mcp
1•mshekow•1h ago•0 comments

The better you get at something, the harder it becomes to do

https://seekingtrust.substack.com/p/improving-at-writing-made-me-almost
2•FinnLobsien•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: WP Float – Archive WordPress blogs to free static hosting

https://wpfloat.netlify.app/
1•zizoulegrande•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Hacked My Family's Meal Planning with an App

https://mealjar.app
1•melvinzammit•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

What happened to the "floating license" model?

3•ashwinsundar•8mo ago
I feel like I used to encounter this licensing model a lot more, in the world of enterprise software. MATLAB famously had floating licenses at the last organization I was at. If too many people concurrently were using MATLAB at the same time, then the server would not let new users sign in (because no licenses were available).

Clearly this is a con, but the pro is that organizations could purchase way fewer licenses than the number of employees that might need to use the software, because presumably not everyone needed to be signed in at the same time. This worked well for software someone might access once a week, for example.

I haven't seen this model offered in a while though. Has it fallen out of favor, and if so, why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_licensing

Comments

nabla9•8mo ago
>Clearly this is a con

How so?

PopAlongKid•8mo ago
> the server would not let new users sign in

That's the "con" (contra).

bityard•8mo ago
If by "floating" you mean not a subscription, then sure. Non-subscription licensing for commercial software is going away for all but niche and indie stuff. For the same reasons my grocery prices have tripled even though overall inflation has not: People are generally willing to put up with arbitrary increases in cost if it's something they really need. They will complain, but they will still pay. Broadcom's Law, or something.

That aside, lots of enterprise software subscriptions still effectively use the floating model because they price by "active user accounts" where an active user is one that has logged in within the last X months. Some will deactivate user accounts automatically when not in use, some you have to make sure to deactivate users when they are no longer with the company or do your own periodic audits.

ashwinsundar•7mo ago
Appreciate the answer but I don't think it really answers the question. I don't think companies were any less greedy 5-10 years ago, compared to today. They certainly didn't just realize that they could make more money by charging for, well, more subscriptions, instead of fewer.