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
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)
(is fully closed source software development even still a thing? is there any popular propriatary programming language / editor / runtime / ecosystem?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
I always say that "Privacy is for Nerds", guess I can start adding Ownership as well.
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.
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 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.
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...
I'm not gonna pay for Amazon because it's Amazon, or Disney because it's Disney. 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 hate Apple.
Funny enough, even the CTO of a past company I worked was back into piracy, even after a successful exit. People are just tired of those services, period.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
tropicalfruit•2h ago
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.