Proof that software as service/cloud based, will never work for long term ...

[CatalinaWOW]

One of the best examples of what dunkemhigh is saying is the MS Office Suite.  It met my needs as of 97.  I don't need the few new features that have been added since, and I actively dislike the new user interface.  Fortunately it was effectively a product back then and I can still use the older version.  If it had moved to the cloud I would be paying continuously to use something that worked no better for me than what came before and is actually less usable. 

Sorry that software programmers need an income stream.  But it is no different than hardware designers, except those designing hardware find it more difficult to convert their work into a subscription.  Though John Deere and others are making moves in that direction.

[bd139]

A real service, such as providing cloud facilities, is OK, but a product? Its worse that that: not only do you not get a say in what the product does, it will change from under your feet as the whim takes the developer. They don't give a stuff because they've already got your money, and they don't have to worry about making something someone wants in order to have a decent lifestyle (unless they really screw up for a lengthy period). They haven't, and won't invest in their own company but get the customer to do that.

Well that's not always true. Sometimes the value that you derive from the software comes from abilities it can't have in a fully disconnected system. For example most financial software these days is about communication and collaboration and that's impossible without a control point and/or remote services. And believe me when you have a pool of say 500 different services to consume, centralising that maintenance effort and the integrations is what the customer is paying for and that's a permanent ongoing effort not a buy it and take it home one. Most businesses work at least partially in that space these days.  And then along comes MS Office as mentioned by CatalinaWOW. People want software that integrates with that and again the best integration point is the Office API which means centralising that somewhere else, which means Microsoft now has an ongoing maintenance commitment as well. This snowballs into real operating costs at which point someone has to pay or it's not going to happen. And the payment is cheap for the value derived which is the key business metric. Typical seat cost vs return is huge in some sectors. The other option is to not use the SaaS platforms out there and lose the return entirely. Ergo, there are places for this sort of software which are mostly unavoidable.

Now I will say that the Office interface does absolutely suck donkey balls. It has been thoroughly compromised over the last few years as it has crap stapled all over it on O365. But some of the functional stuff out there it does there is no alternative for so we're stuck with it.

[Marco]

Bitrotted malware bait is not really an option for most companies ... they are on the update mill regardless.

Niche boutique software for engineers with a decade of life and negligible attack surface is the exception, not the rule. Even for engineers, the super-complex 100 seat CAD software with a ton of CVEs and engineers opening files from e-mail all day every day are where the money is at. There's niches for single purchase software, but don't confuse your niches with proper software

[MrMobodies]

One of the best examples of what dunkemhigh is saying is the MS Office Suite.  It met my needs as of 97.  I don't need the few new features that have been added since, and I actively dislike the new user interface.  Fortunately it was effectively a product back then and I can still use the older version.  If it had moved to the cloud I would be paying continuously to use something that worked no better for me than what came before and is actually less usable. 

Sorry that software programmers need an income stream.  But it is no different than hardware designers, except those designing hardware find it more difficult to convert their work into a subscription.  Though John Deere and others are making moves in that direction.

I read 2019 was the last perpetual version
https://appuals.com/microsoft-office-2019-will-be-the-last-offline-productivity-suite-users-will-have-to-adopt-to-office-365-after-support-ends/

But it looks like they changed their mind and released the next edition in 2021:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/troubleshoot/installation/office-perpetual-volume-license-products

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3340227/don-t-waste-your-money-on-office-2019-says-microsoft.html

Don’t waste your money on Office 2019 (says Microsoft)
Office 2019 has been out just a few months, so naturally Microsoft has a big marketing push urging you to … NOT buy it?
Steven J. Vaughan-NicholsBy Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Computerworld | 13 FEBRUARY 2019 18:03 GMT

We’ve all had a chuckle at the expense of Microsoft Office, with the ’90s debuts of Bob and Clippy being particularly hilarious (at least in hindsight). But now it is Microsoft itself that is making fun of Office 2019, the latest version of its iconic office suite. Although Office 2019 was just released this past September, Microsoft is urging you to replace it — and your older versions of Office — with Office 365.

And it’s not just in Microsoft’s “Twins Challenge” ads. Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Office and Windows group, comes right out and says that * Office 2019’s applications are “frozen in time. They don’t ever get updated with new features,” while “Office 365 includes fully installed Office applications ... and these apps keep getting better over time, with new capabilities delivered every month.” Wait, what happened to Office service packs? Well, it appears there won’t be any. I’m sure the line of users wanting to sign up for those “new capabilities”  is already forming. Or maybe not. What exactly can you add to an office suite these days, anyway? As far as I’m concerned, the last worthwhile “new capabilities” came with Office 2003. In the software industry, a 16-year drought for killer apps was once inconceivable.

What does Microsoft’s marketing push against itself mean? It means that it is moving from being a product company to being a service company. Microsoft doesn’t want to sell you bits on a floppy, CD, DVD or download anymore. Instead, it wants you to rent a service from it forever and a day. It’s been coming for some time. Back in 2015, I pointed out that Microsoft made only 10% of its revenue from Windows sales. In Microsoft’s last quarter, Microsoft reported that its Office revenue increased 11%, which was driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 34%. Microsoft is continuing to move its business model to where the money is. And the money is in cloud-based services.

You can see this in what might first look to you like two unrelated developments. First, Microsoft gave up on developing its Edge web browser. It’s replacing Edge’s internals with Google’s open-source Chromium code. Second, Microsoft is cutting off support for Internet Explorer (IE) 10 years sooner than expected. And, even more amazing, Microsoft senior cybersecurity architect Chris Jackson actually blogged that Microsoft wants you to stop using IE and start using “modern”  browsers instead. And what are modern browsers? They’re Chrome-based browsers.

The upshot: Microsoft no longer cares if you’re using Microsoft bits on your computer. It wants you to use archrival Google’s Chrome instead. Heck, a Microsoft web developer told Mozilla’s developers on Twitter that they should throw in the towel on Firefox in favor of Chromium. Why? Because, looking ahead, Microsoft wants to cash in on services and not products. That’s one of the reasons why Microsoft has been embracing open-source software. Not only is that where its enterprise customers are now, but if you’re offering services instead of packages, you don’t care so much about having control of the bits. What you care about is delivering great services that will keep customers coming. And that’s what Microsoft thinks it has in Office 365.
The next natural step from here is Windows as a service.   I don’t know when Microsoft will finally switch over to a Chrome OS-style Windows, but I do know it’s coming.

I am, in the meantime, certain we won’t ever see another standalone version of Office. It’s done.

Office 2019’s applications are “frozen in time. They don’t ever get updated with new features,[/b]” while “Office 365 includes fully installed Office applications

*That is what I want. To be left alone. I don't want any fancy changes apart from features but only when I need them not just stuffed in my face like that distracting "Microsoft tell me" that appeared after an update that they placed on the ribbon in the middle 6? words wide where I can't help not see it but no setting to move or hide it. I found by making enough empty tabs it pushes "tell me" and share" to the right and out of the way where it can no longer be seen.

I am not signing up for anything. I just want to pay for things, alter and make it work in the way I want and when I am happy and confident with it I just want it to be left alone apart from security fixes but I can't trust them to do that I'rather do it manually. I don't want the appearance changed when they feel like. I find that more like interference.

[SiliconWizard]

What I'm wondering is whether there is still some sizeable market for software that is neither cloud- nor subscription-based.
It kinda looks like you have this crap on one side, and then purely open-source software on the other side, and no room  left for anything else.

[bd139]

Depends if you like to eat or not.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
I read 2019 was the last perpetual version
[...]

Older versions of Office are still perfectly viable, e.g. Office 2010.  I expect Office 2019 to be viable until 2030!

Adobe Photoshop CS6 (last perpetual version) is also still perfectly viable today, depending on what you do with it.  The latest iterations of the subscription product has begun to actually remove features (such as 3D capability), presumably so customers can be forced to subscribe to two products where one would have been sufficient in the past...

[bd139]

I have the Adobe digital photography sub. Lightroom and Photoshop. I don't mind paying for it and I benefit from it.  It's 1.5 pints of beer a month 

[PlainName]

It's 1.5 pints of beer a month

For a single product. Multiply that by all the products you use, and those that you only use periodically, and it gets to be quite a sum. Should you stumble across hard times that will be all gone - it's like living on credit and then finding yourself without income or savings.

[bd139]

Trick is to make sure there aren't hard times which I've more than done. Plus I have an exit plan for this as well. My total outgoings on software subs are £39 a month for everyone in my family so it's not terrible

[PlainName]

Well, that's you set then. Pity you're not the only person in the world.

[bd139]

It's not a closed market where this is the only option. There are other products out there, some of which have no capital or monthly cost.

Really this entire thread is about people getting pissy about not getting something for free. The capital vs monthly TCO of Adobe is the same. Office is fractionally more unless you bag the family edition which is quite frankly a fucking bargain. But you get 1TB storage with it 

[PlainName]

It's not a closed market yet, that's true. But that's the direction everyone is going. The more they are seen to be successful the more others want to join them. Microsoft missed the boat as usual, but once they saw what others were doing they wanted in, and look at them now. Eventually, it will be the de facto deal with little to no alternative.

The only potential way out of that is to refuse to join, early enough that weight of numbers can achieve anything.

[bd139]

Actually Microsoft were there before everyone. They had their Application Service Provider model. I was an early subscriber to that at a major consultancy.

The problem is that everyone is evaluating this from a home power user perspective really. For any business it's simply an operating cost that gets pushed down to the customers along with the electricity bill and the salaries and that's not even a notable fraction of those! For lesser home users, they don't even need any software.

Everyone has pretty much already joined. It's over now.

Of course you can use LibreOffice if you want still. But I refuse because of horrible bugs like the taking 2 minutes to open a calc file if a printer is turned off (yes that exists)

[PlainName]

For any business it's simply an operating cost that gets pushed down to the customers...

Yes and often beneficial to PAYG for cash flow and other reasons.

[free_electron]

BMW is now charging for options such as heated seats, satnav and others. monthly subscription... They are experimenting in the Korean market.

[SiliconWizard]

So you can pay for heated seats only in winter months?

[bd139]

Now that’s some MBA class thinking 

[free_electron]

So you can pay for heated seats only in winter months?

if they are smart : pay in summer to be able to turn them off 

[SiliconWizard]

So you can pay for heated seats only in winter months?

if they are smart : pay in summer to be able to turn them off 

Jokes aside, paying only when you actually use a feature would at least be a reason for making it subscription-based, so make the subscription flexible. If the granularity is 1 year or more, it's just bullshit.

[TimFox]

I'm old enough to remember when the US telephone system (except for limited regions with a different company) was a monopoly operated by the old AT&T.
All equipment was rented, and the company spent a whole lot of legal time to keep customer-owned equipment away from the network.
The upside was that, to minimize repair costs, the customer equipment was heavily engineered, very robust, and reliable.
The downside was that innovation at the customer end was restricted to pink telephones for teenaged girls.
The baby thrown out with the bathwater was the well-respected Bell Labs.

[Gregg]

How soon until heated seat bypass kits are on aliexpress? 
I really think that anyone with a bit of automotive electrical knowledge could figure out a way to disconnect the heater elements and make them work the old fashioned way (without the need for the computer control).

[nigelwright7557]

And yet there still are people who are OK with eagle being moved to a subscription only system. 

I guess those people never had a chance to imagine, that one day, suddenly they lost their access to their hard worked circuit or pcb designs, just because a leader of a country said so.

Yep, even they're stored locally, as the need to be onlined in order to launch the program, means nothing to prevent the software to lock down all your files once it successfully contacted the mothership. 

There will always be other options from free to extortionate.

[Nominal Animal]

What I'm wondering is whether there is still some sizeable market for software that is neither cloud- nor subscription-based.
It kinda looks like you have this crap on one side, and then purely open-source software on the other side, and no room  left for anything else.

Not for bulk software, that's for sure.

Tools, I'm not sure.  I am hoping that the cloud connectivity requirement is like the dongles of old: a passing fad.

[Miyuki]

How soon until heated seat bypass kits are on aliexpress? 
I really think that anyone with a bit of automotive electrical knowledge could figure out a way to disconnect the heater elements and make them work the old fashioned way (without the need for the computer control).

I expect they will have some catch in EULA (or what they use  ) and propper detection system, and when detecting any disturbance in a computer network, they will just brick the entire car.
And all will be perfectly legal.
Because it is for your safety.
As they always call all anti-repair efforts.