I know a lot of people here on HN think subscription models are pretty swell - personally I think they're not so great.
Sure, they provide revenue that can support security fixes - but at the cost of decimating the incentive to improve features to generate upgrade revenue.
After all, if spending more on development doesn't raise revenues much, but cutting down to a skeleton team of maintenance developers means that subscription revenue is almost pure profit, there'll always be investors pushing for that.
Seems to me that invites our industry to stagnate and stop producing value, if you don't need to make a better product in order to bring in revenue.
I actually think that pressures from customers increases somewhat when they are dealing with an ongoing fee which they see hitting their accounts on a monthly basis. Every time I see it there is a question of, "how is this software working for me? Do I still need it?" ... Not so much the case with perpetual licensing until it is time to (potentially) upgrade.
In my opinion software doesn't have to add features all the time. It would be okay for me if it kept doing what it's doing, except bugs get fixed and performance improves.
Sure, they provide revenue that can support security fixes - but at the cost of decimating the incentive to improve features to generate upgrade revenue.
After all, if spending more on development doesn't raise revenues much, but cutting down to a skeleton team of maintenance developers means that subscription revenue is almost pure profit, there'll always be investors pushing for that.
Seems to me that invites our industry to stagnate and stop producing value, if you don't need to make a better product in order to bring in revenue.