2y ago

Subscription models for an app that’s not hosting anything is just the dev wanting a constant revenue stream, no matter how they try to word it.

Subscription models only make sense for an app/service that have recurring costs. In the case of Lemmy apps, the instances are the ones with recurring hosting costs, not the apps.

If an app doesn’t have recurring hosting costs, it only makes sense to have one up front payment and then maybe in app purchases to pay for new features going forward

81 comments

Isn't app development a recurring cost? It's not like you just work on it for a bit and just forget about it once you got a version out. Especially if it's using a service (lemmy) that is still in development and is constantly changing.
- Preach. Not sure why this is so hard for folks to understand.
  App development isn't and never has been an one-time done deal. Devs always do the work to fix bugs, add new features / requests, upgrade to new platform / API etc. If they do this for free that is at their will but they are burning their own time / money one way or another. To demand a developer to run their business a certain way and mandate their business model is just mind-blowing to me.
  
  I get the distinct impression that everyone bitching about the fees are people that have never had to develop for end users and maintain the fucking thing.

Ongoing development IS an recurring cost.
I have zero problem with people trying to get paid for their work, often it is the only feasible way to dedicate enough time to the project.
I'd prefer open source sure, but I'm not all that opposed to small/individual projects not going that route. Especially when it's not a critical service and there's an abundance of FOSS choices

Personally, I don't need yet another subscription service.
That being said, I've used Sync for years (Pro, so just ad removal, one time fee.), and just paid again for ad removal. I did this because I enjoy the app, and appreciate the effort that goes into creating and maintaining it.
I have no qualms about paying a person for quality work.
- And then making money tracking you too
  
  Tracking is for ads only, when ads are disabled then so is the tracking.
  https://lemmy.world/comment/1991550

If I understand correctly, every sync feature that requires the subscription (and cannot be purchased by a one time fee) requires the sync dev to run a constantly online server. Translation makes calls to translation services that cost money, push notifications require a push server since Lemmy servers don't include support for it, etc. Removing ads doesn't cost sync ongoing cash which is why you can get it for a one time fee.
Seems reasonable to me.

All apps have a recurring cost if the dev is continuing to develop the app. At the scale these apps are working the labor the dev puts in in the most expensive part. Plus Lemmy is continually updating so to keep the app working the dev will need to continually update.

Everyone wants a constant revenue stream, app devs aint unique. And also like everyone else, they charge what people are willing to pay. Price is never about cost.

I don't really get how everyone focuses on the ad-free feature as if it's the only thing that Sync Ultra provides. It also provides text recognition in images, translation in-app, (both requiring constant server work) and will eventually support push notifications (again requiring server work). On top of that, LJ has stated he wants to work on this app full-time, which is only possible if he earns a living from it.
If those features aren't interesting to a user, there's always the one-time ad removal option (I'll admit which is a bit pricey but per OP's post, is a one time fee and not a subscription).

Yeah how dare them try to make a salary out of their labour. OUTRAGEOUS!
- The thing I really don't understand, and what is really starting to annoy me, is that you don't have to use it.
  I used sync for years. I even bought the pro version to get rid of ads. When I saw the price for the new app I decided that I didn't want to pay that and moved the fuck on.
  I understand why the price was what it was. This is how this person makes their living. I don't want to pay what they're charging and that's that. Complaining about it seems childish, and now I realize I'm complaining about people complaining.
  All of this is nonsense.

I mean, if you want updates or fixes for bugs that's on work that occurred after you paid? Or are you suggesting we go back to the old model of super expensive software that gets sunsetted in a few years anyway?
Development costs money. When you buy an app, development doesn't stop. What kind of nonsense are you peddling here? How do you have such a rudimentary understanding of work and effort and how they all cost money?

As much as I support the developers’ right to profit off their work, I also cannot afford to have everything in my life turn into a reoccurring payment model.
- Then don't. Free version barely has any ads and has 99% of the functionality. Y'all a bunch of babies.
  
  I’m not talking about this one specific application. I’m talking about the trend that everything is taking.
  One thing in isolation isn’t bad. “ItS oNlY $xx.99/yr” after all.
  But when stepping back and looking at the trend you see a different story.
  It’s only $10
  It’s only $15
  It’s only $30
  It’s only $5
  It’s only $50
  It’s only $100
  It’s only $60
  It’s only $3
  It’s only $1599
  It’s only $130
  It’s only $45
  It’s only $99
  It’s only $200
  It’s only…

There's one thing you're forgetting; most applications aren't just code-and-forget anymore. Updates need to be made to fix security issues, adapt to newer versions of the API, etc.

Much as I liked Sync for Reddit I'm not willing to participate in subscription pricing for something like this, nor am I willing to pay a breathtaking $100 for a lifetime license or a still high $20 for ad removal. Keeping it in perspective, Sync is an Android app that provides nothing more than a nice UI for lemmy.
It will take some time for the number of Lemmy users and Sync customers to ramp up. IMO the dev is trying to quickly replace his lost Sync for Reddit revenue by charging excessively high prices for Sync for Lemmy. He's lucky so many of you want to pay him but I, for one, will pass on Sync and use other apps with more reasonable pricing.
This comment was written on Infinity for Lemmy which is working just fine.
- $16/year for ultra seems pretty reasonable to me.

It's no win scenario for developers. While you're ok with "one up front payment and then maybe in app purchases to pay for new features going forward" there's a whole other slew of voices who are going to complain about being nickled and dimed.
Given those choices (and other factors), as a consumer I prefer the subscription model. If nothing else, it lets me forecast my expenditure and continually re-assess the cost/value proposition of the application in question.

Well, there are recurring costs, such as:
App/Play store developer license - like $100/year, so not huge
development efforts to fix bugs, implement features; even just keeping up with Lemmy backend changes is a fair amount of work since it's constantly changing
many development tools require hosting, such as CI/CD, so even if it's 100% outside contributor driven, there are still costs
But those costs are pretty fixed.
Hosting an instance, however, is an order of magnitude or two more expensive. Instead of costing up to hundreds per year (not counting dev time), hosting tends to cost hundreds per month for larger instances.
So if people are continually coming to an app, I could see a fixed purchase price being different, and ads are probably enough to support it entirely on a free tier. An instance requires ongoing donations instead.
- unless they changed it, play dev is a one time purchase, only apple takes a yearly fee.
  
  I thought Play was $25/year or something, but it's been years since I cared enough to check. If so, I guess for Android-only apps, it's much less of an issue.

Of course they want a constant revenue stream. I want a constant revenue stream as well, isn't it normal?
Whether the price is worth paying for you is a different matter but wanting to profit off your hard and good work is completely natural to me.

Not the best take. The apps still need to continue to be developed, adding new features and improvements along the way. That's the cost of development. Not everything is just the cost of infrastructure. By that logic, McDonald's workers shouldn't be paid because it's not their buns and patties, etc.

Something has gone wrong in software development where software can never be finished.
If you release an app on Google Play and never touch it again, eventually Google will pull it from the store and customers will complain that it no longer runs on new devices. Android 16 will require that all applications now do something, and refuse to run any that do not.
This is the real structural source of the constant subscription demands. Nobody is willing to commit to supporting a stable API for 10 or 20 years, and nobody will keep coming in to bump dependency versions and rewrite systems to Google or Apple's new whims every year unless they get paid for this apparently useless work.
- of course nobody is going to commit to supporting a stable API for 10 to 20 years… that’s expensive as heck and not even remotely worth it!
  there’s nothing “wrong” with software development, it’s just that consumers demand new features rather than stagnation… i sure don’t want to be using a 20 year old app because we’ve come a long way in 20 years in so many regards
  in 2003, windows xp was still microsoft’s dominant OS with vista still being several years off, half life 2 was about to be released, gmail was allllmost ready to release, msn messenger was still in its prime
  yeah no, ill stick with rapidly changing technologies rather than sticking to that for some misplaced sense of “stability”
  
  But one would like to be able to still play Half Life 2 today, even if Valve weren't helpfully around to update it. One would like to be able to read an old Word document or display an old blog post along with its scripts. So either you support the old standards and, for active content, the old APIs, or you lose access to anything that doesn't emit enough cash to pay a person to keep it current.
- Did you just say progress is what's wrong with software development? Really. Do you even know how software development works before criticizing how it works?
  
  I think the requirement for constant progress, and the expectation that all software be able to change arbitrarily with a year or so of notice, is in fact a problem with software development.
  I do software development all the time, and I find this to be an impediment to my work. I also make the kind of breaking changes that cause this problem.
- I think it started when software stopped being distributed physically. It's hard to push a bunch of updates to your users when they've need to physically have floppies sent to them versus doing it over the network.
  I remember a time when software being "Gold Master" meant it was literally written to a gold master disk, from which copies were made. With that kind of release you had to make damn sure things were finished.
  
  The difference is that software nowadays is interconnected. Sync doesn't exist on its own, nor does Lemmy. And if one of these links changes, chances are, that something else needs to change to keep up. You're talking about standalone software that that exists entirely on its own. But that's not what this post is about.
- Technology moves fast. Why would you want to have an app that old, and what app is actually worth running that is that old and unsupported?
  
  Games are a good example. One might want to publish a game and then work on the next game, not go back to the first game again and add dynamic permission prompts for the accelerometer or recompile with the new SDK or whatever. But someone also might want to play Space Grocer I before Space Grocer II-X to get the whole story.
  The fewer breaking changes there are, the lower the burden of an app being "supported" is. Someone might be willing to recompile the app every couple years, or add a new required argument to a function call, but not really able to commit to re-architecting the program to deal with completely new and now-mandatory concepts.
  Even on software I actively work on that is "supported" by me, I struggle with the frequency of e.g. angry messages demanding I upgrade to new and incompatible versions of Node modules. Time spent porting to new and incompatible versions of a framework is time not spent keeping the app worth using.

What does this have to do with Lemmy as a platform?

I generally agree, though I could be convinced of recurring payment in the case of high speed APIs that need a lot of updates to keep working. Chasing an API can be a lot of work.
Of course, a solution to that is having an up-front payment and letting people update as they wish--if there's new value in the new releases presumably they will.
- Your suggestion is incompatible with the current infrastructure of either Google Play or Apples' App Store. It's nearly impossible to do that you're asking without severely limiting the app.

Yes, and?

Doesn't the Sync Dev (LJDawson) work on Sync fulltime?
- Yes And the only reason we had sync for Lemmy so rapidly is that he worked full time on sync for reddit too but he found himself without a stable income from night to day when the API stuff happened.

I assume you’re talking about Sync? You’re in luck because you could do a one time payment if you wanted to.

Having settings, viewed posts etc sync between devices requires expenses through a server or service
- Unless it's using built-in cloud storage. Like some password managers "sync" via Google drive or OneDrive, etc.

This just seems like a Patreon with extra steps. If you like what he does, chip in a bit for it. If not, find something else.

33$ !

I blame Apple for not creating a viable system for paid upgrades; it's perfectly reasonable for a developer to expect to be paid for a major app update - even if it was largely to support a new OS - but without a subscription, the only way to do that is to launch a brand new version of your app, which loses you all of your carefully cultivated SEO / links / etc. (doing this via IAP is impractical because you can only build your app against one version of iOS at a time; it either supports the new version or it doesn't)
And I suspect Apple does this because they don't want people to have to pay money to continue using apps on a new version of iOS, or a new phone; if buying a new iPhone meant forking over $50 to upgrade your favorite apps for it, that might mean fewer people buying new phones.
So don't blame developers for this, in other words; a lot of them would be perfectly happy to charge users the occasional upgrade fee instead of a recurring subscription, but Apple doesn't want them to. (they're also very happy to have their 30% cut of all of that lovely subscription revenue)
- Apple and Google app stores had done devs dirty by popularizing the dollar-an-app model. Completely set the wrong expectations about the value of software for users, especially younger ones who grew up with this bs.

I can see both sides of this. I don't usually update an app unless I'm having problems that are fixed in a later update.
Ongoing development of an app can be for various things. For things like bugfixes to existing code, I don't think we should necessarily pay for that. For brand new features that weren't promised before and didn't exist before there could be a case for paying for that.
- Honestly, there's no such thing as bug free. I'm not in support of never ending bug support fixes for life. It just isn't possible. Especially with new versions, etc. If you don't give them upgrades, it now creates more work as you're supporting multiple branches. This is why OSes have end of support. There will always be bugfixes.
  
  Bug free is not possible, but there are certainly degrees of bugs. If I pay for software that is supposed to balance my checkbook and it has errors in the math, I would expect those errors to be fixed or my money returned. If one of the buttons is 2px out of alignment, it's not a big deal. The software should at least functionally do what you paid for it to do, without any additional expense. IMHO.

81 comments