I understand you might feel this way, but it seems to me customers are mostly business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.). In fact, having no copy protection would probably have saved you the problem you mentioned where a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available; this is one of the talking points that anti-drm/copy protection people advocate for, software lost to time and unable to be archived when the entities who made such protections go out of business or no longer want to support older software.
> even on legitimate platforms like Shopee or Lazada.
On a slight tangent, but I personally don't find either platform legitimate (Better than say, wish[.]com or temu, but not as "legitimate" as other platforms, though I can't think of a single fully legitimate e-commerce platform). Shopee collects a ton of tracking information (Just turn on your adblocked, or inspect your network calls. It's even more than Amazon!), is full of intrusive ads, sketchy deals, and scammers. You yourself said you can easily find cracked versions of the dongle there, which doesn't speak well for the platform. And Lazada is owned by Alibaba Group, which speaks for itself. I'm not sure why consumers in South East Asian regions aren't more outspoken about this, since they seem to be the some of the more popular e-commerce platforms there.
This is a nice idea but the reality is that there's MANY corporate customers who are happy to get away with casual piracy. Sometimes it's a holdover from when the company was small enough that every business expense is realistically coming out of their own pocket, sometimes they're trying to obfuscate how much their department actually costs to the company at large.
You think individual consumers lie to themselves to justify software piracy? Corporate self-deception is a WHOLE new kettle of fish.
Dongles were pretty commonplace on your more expensive software products from mid 90s through the early 00s. If I was publishing software that was a >$1000 a license, I damn sure would have used them.
This was true of all software they used, but MSDN was the most expensive and blatant. If it didn't have copy protection, they weren't buying more than one copy.
We were a software company. Our own software shipped with a Sentinel SuperPro protection dongle. I guess they assumed their customers were just as unscrupulous as them. Probably right.
Every employer I've worked for since then has actually purchased the proper licenses. Is it because the industry started using online activation and it wasn't so easy to copy any more? I've got a sneaky feeling.
During roughly the same time period I worked for a company with similar practices. When a director realised what was going on, and the implications for personal liability, I was given the job of physically securing the MSDN CD binder, and tracking installations.
This resulted in everyone hating me, to the extent of my having stand-up, public arguments with people who felt they absolutely needed Visual J++, or whatever. Eventually I told the business that I wasn't prepared to be their gatekeeper anymore. I suspect practices lapsed back to what they'd been before, but its been a while.
Unity is getting way too cheeky considering how they started out. =3
I'd agree that between Unreal and Godot, Unity doesn't look very attractive right now. But inertia will carry them for a long time
Trust the people whose paychecks depend on it, it was extremely common. I knew multiple people at different companies who had endless stories about customers buying a couple of copies for a large department to “share”, and they expected the vendor to support everything because it was “business critical”. This was also a problem for things like student licenses where people would expect enterprise-level support despite the massively-discounted copy they had clearly stating it was only for educational usage.
This has a lot of negative aspects for preservation, downtime due to issues with licensing, challenges around virtualization or hardware replacement, etc. so I don’t love the situation we ended up in but it’s entirely understandable given how pervasive theft was – there were a ton of small businesses which ran entirely on bootlegged software. Software developers have high leverage but if you aren’t in a mainstream market you’re not going to get over the threshold where you’re no longer worried about making payroll.
They often need to "purchase" the license themselves in the sense of convincing someone higher up to buy it - so they're spending their time, which is still a sort of expense.
Also, piracy in companies is often just honest people who are in a bit of a hurry and need this software running on some other PC right now, or just want their colleague to give it a quick go (but then they end up using it all the time). Copy protection helps keep those honest people honest.
The big boys in the industry won't risk problems, and anyway, that's a small price for them. However, the many smaller companies? They may absolutely need the software, but that's a substantial price for them. If they can get a cracked version online, they do.
And the cracked versions? They are made by companies out of legal reach: Russia, Belarus, Pakistan, India. They crack the software, and either put it online for free, or even have the cheek to sell it for a reduced price.
I've told my friend/acquaintance that he really needs to put the software in the cloud, accessible only via browser. However, this would be a massive undertaking, so he hasn't done it (yet).
I always thought that selling B2B. Then I started checking and it was much worse than I expected. Big corporates were mostly fine but small to medium sized business were pretty bad. Also Asia was much worse than Europe and the US.
“Spare the money” is probably what you mean. That is to part with the money, to avoid having it, for example by spending it. Or by giving it away - As in “can you spare a dime.” The is the inverse of sparing the expense, just as an expense is the inverse of money.
In my experience this continues to this day due to people who require drawing on air-gapped computers, because the drawings/simulations they work on are highly sensitive (nuclear, military, and other sensitive infrastructure).
But I'm sure there are also old-fashioned people who like the portability/sovereignty of not having to rely on a third-party license server as you suggest.
Why should users upgrade or keep paying you when they already bought what they need and don't need anything else?
1. Physical dongle tends to break, and when it does, they expect us to give them replacing parts
2. They do expect bug fixes-- especially calculation bug fixes-- as the bugs are discovered. It's hard to leave their production critical apps broken like that once you know that the bugs can cause monetary or even life loss.
Maybe I'm the weird one to expect reasonably bug-free software, and if a bug is found, an eventual bugfix "for free"? ESPECIALLY if they cause monetary or life loss!
A bug means the developer did not do their job. Let's not pretend this is OK.
But the actual dongle... look, something like that should have a 30+ year warranty. There should be a plan for how to replace it a couple times before making the initial sale.
Then users are suddenly all over the developer to provide an update "so I can use this on Tahoe" or whatever, and unless the application is in its honeymoon period where new sales suffice to keep money flowing, the developer is gonna need recurring revenue in order to do recurring development.
The fairest thing to do is when a customer buys the software, they're entitled to that exact version forever. Or maybe 1 year of updates and bug fixes if you're feeling nice. If they want the next version that supports the next OS, it's fair to charge some more.
This what IntelliJ does. When I buy their IDE I can use it forever, and then they offer discounts for renewing. Pricing seems reasonable even though I'm currently generating $0 from my software development so I keep paying.
Because things evolve and inevitably, hardware dies, and you can't get a replacement.
With an old "dumb" piece of machinery, when something breaks you can either repair the broken part itself (i.e. weld it back together, re-wind motor coils), make a new part from scratch, have a new part be made from scratch by a machining shop, or you adapt a new but not-fitting part. It can be a shitload of work, but theoretically, there is no limits.
With anything involving electronics - ranging from very simple circuitry to highly complex computer controls - the situation is much, much different. With stuff based on "common" technology, aka a good old x86 computer with RS232/DB25 interfaces, virtualization plus an I/O board can go a long way ensuring at least the hardware doesn't die, but if it's anything based on, say, Windows CE and an old Hitachi CPU? Good fucking luck - either you find a donor machine or you have to recreate it, and good luck doing that without spec sheets detailing what exactly needs to be done in which timings for a specific action in the machine. If you're in really bad luck, even the manufacturer doesn't have the records any more, or the manufacturer has long since gone out of business (e.g. during the dotcom era crash).
And for stuff that's purely software... well, eventually you will not find people experienced enough to troubleshoot and fix issues, or make sure the software runs after any sort of change.
The IT department restructures the license server or it goes down.
The vendor changes their license technology every few years.
If you have a physical dongle, the vendor will beg you to send it in and receive a soft license. The few remaining users with dongles refuse. The hardware is more reliable.
This take is diametrically opposite to what end users need. In a world where "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is perfectly fine for the end user, buying a one off license for a software seems much more sane then SaaS. SaaS is like a plague for end users.
I don't condone piracy, but I also don't condone SaaS.
But in an imperfect world whereby our dependencies ( software components that we use) and platforms that we need to build/rely on ( like Civil 3D) do charge us on annual basis, and that some of users expect perpetual bug fixes from us, with or without a support contract of sorts, SaaS seems to only way to go for our sustainability.
We've all got to push back against these bloated saas models that don't bring tangible benefits to end users and serve only to pad company valuations. Make new versions of your software with features meaningful enough to encourage people to upgrade and outline support periods for existing software sales after they buy a one-time license. There's gotta be a better way. For everyone (except big tech CEOs).
That's why software keep adding bloat fancy buttons and change color scheme every few years. This is anti-productive.
No support contract? Pound sand.
The problem exists from both sides of the coin. Firstly the bulk of customers don't purchase a support contract. So there is very little income to pay staff. So the "support" department has very few people. They're also not very good because low wages means staff turnover.
Then Betty phones with a problem. Significant time is spent explaining to Betty that we can't help her because she (or more accurately her company) doesn't have a contract. She's fighting back because an annual contract seems a lot for this piddly question. Plus to procure the contract will take days (or weeks or months) on her side. And it's not I any budget, making things harder. Betty is very unhappy.
The junior tech doesn't want to be an arsehole and it's a trivial question, and is stuck in the middle.
We switched to a SaaS model in 2011. Users fell over themselves thanking us. They don't have to justify it to procurement. The amount can be budgeted for. No sudden upgrade or support fees. Users get support when they need it. The support department is funded and pays well, resulting in low staff turnover, and consequently better service.
Plus, new sales can stop tomorrow and service continues. Funding for support remains even if sales saturate the market.
Consumers may dislike SaaS, but for business, it absolutely matches their model, provides predictability, and allows for great service, which results in happy Users.
In the companies I've worked for so far since SaaS became a thing you absolutely need to go through procurement for a big enough purchase. You actually need to negotiate the contract each time it expires, which is IMO more burden on the end user than buying a one-off license.
The problem with support contracts, or support requests solved by an upgrade, is that the User needs it now, not after a procurement process.
Doing procurement annually is easier because it can be planned for, budgeted for etc, and happens on a separate thread to the actual support.
Even when they overlap there's enough grace to keep the User happy while waiting on the customer.
What's wrong with SaaS?
If we didn't sell our desktop software to ~1000 companies as a SaaS then few would afford it. We could sell one-off/perpetual licenses for maybe $1M but only our biggest customers would manage that expense, while smaller competitors would not. And if that means we sold only 300 licenses, then the price would be even higher because the number of licenses sold would be even smaller. The SaaS is basically what the customers ask for. They can cancel and switch to competing software when they want to. In fact, customers who use the software rarely feel the SaaS yearly cost is too high so ask for even more SaaS-y functionality such as paying by minute of use or per specific action like "run simulation", instead of having a yearly subscription. Because they might just use it a few days per year so they feel that (say) $10/yr is too much.
That's okay, but in say, 2 years when Mac OS 28 completely bricks the app, the developer will not be there to give you an updated one (even if you're willing to pay), since most of the addressible market already bought the app in 2025, and after 2 years with almost no revenue, the developer stopped working on it, deleted the repo and moved onto another project. The developer can't even rely on a future OS update "encouraging" people to buy "App (N+1)" since it might be "ain't broke" for 1 year, or for 5.
The point of a subscription is not to rip you off, it's to acknowledge a few realities:
1. For reasons beyond developers' control, platform vendors do not provide a "permanent" platform, but a shifting one without any long-term guarantees. You can put a 100-year certificate into your app, but the OS vendor might decide that only certs with expiration less than 45 days are okay and your app no longer works unless you're around to (A) keep abreast of the platform's rules and changes, and (B) ship an update.
2. Many software offerings need to provide a server-side component, which is never a one-time cost.
3. Relying on upgrade purchases to sustain a product gives developers perverse incentives to shove a ton of new features just to be able to pitch "Upgrade to Appitron 2!" with a ton of bullet points, whereas subscription pricing incentivizes them simply to keep users loving the app forever, including adopting new technologies but also just improving the core experience.
Due to 1 and 2, it makes sense to let users who stop using the program after a short time pay very little, and to let users who rely on the continued operation of the program, pay a little bit each year, instead of paying $500 once and using it for a few years, and maybe upgrading for $250.
Reality is that many modern software developments have plenty in common with designing a toilet. You spend time identifying the problem statement, how you can differentiate yourself, prototype it, work out the bugs, ship the final product, and let sales teams move the product. The difference is the toilet can't be turned into a SaaS (yet) and, if it ever could, that would break functionality because you're supposed to poop in it, not have it poop on you.
Mercedes restricts the performance of some cars if you don't pay $1200 a year for the “Acceleration Increase”. You have to pay more if you want to use the power you already paid for.
BMW offer heated seats for £10 a month. The car has heated seats that work fine, and you paid for the hardware already, but they are turned off if you don't pay more.
Neither of these are anything to do with ongoing costs to the company, like support or mobile connection, they just want ongoing revenue.
If I have "Ajax" brand leather shoes sown by an East Asian sweatshop worker, who is the "creator" of the shoes, for purposes of benefiting from this system?
We are agreed that the company "Ajax" is not a creator, yes? Companies don't create - people create. Patented inventions are created by people, though patent ownership may be transferred to companies.
So does the monthly fee go to the skilled laborer who sewed the pieces together to give the final form? And also the laborers who turned cow hide into leather? As well as everyone involved in the shoe design? Does it also pass to their inheritors? For how long?
The house I owned was built in the 1950s by a local construction firm which is still around. There were several owners before me, including ones who remodeled and renovated it. Do all of them get part of my monthly fee? Or does it go to the woodworkers and plumbers and other builders who did the actual work?
I have books in my personal collection from authors who died decades ago. How do I reward Robert Heinlein in this "keep paying" scheme? Some of these books I bought used, so neither Heinlein nor his estate ever got a penny from me.
But that's fine, as the price point for the original sale already factored in the effect of the First Sale Doctrine.
Just like how the price of a car, house, bike, shows, etc. already factors in the reward for everyone involved, without needed an entirely new system to determine who the "creators" are, and how they get paid monthly.
And that's all assuming the fee distribution system itself is fair. We need only look to academic publishing to see unfair things can be once a system is entrenched.
The issue is a mismatch of incentives - customers wanting things for free - even if they aren’t actually customers. Vs businesses need/want for ongoing revenue (ideally for free too!).
Both sides are never going to be perfectly happy, but there are reasonable compromises. There are also extractive abusive psychos, of course.
Free customers can store 3 hours of sound. This former paying customer had more than 3 hours of sound stored.
The comment said SoundCloud was a terrible company holding their data hostage, by not letting them do anything with it except delete things to get it under 3 hours, and threatening to delete all of it if they didn't.
This part is left out in modern software development.
Bugs ? What bugs ? We just (re)wrote a new version. This one should be better.
Sometimes, there are network interuptions. Then it is the right time to work because youtube isn't available.
1) a hardware and software solution implies that hardware will stop working at some point. Customers should understand it 2) you could sell them a new dongle every time support contract ends which is what I’ve experienced with Xways as an example. Even if you’re air gapped once a year usage data upload and new dongle seems fine. 3) why should users receive free upgrades and bug fixes? No software is bug free.
Finally there are several brand protection shops that fight fakes and work well with Shopee, Lazada, Facebook etc. It’s not five dollars but they will take these down effectively
Which is not uncommon.
It’s also one that is typically pretty good for customers that like to do an investment and then continue to reap benefits from it. The capitalization model.
The ‘lease’ model (SaaS) is good for customers with highly variable licensing/software needs or that expect extremely high turnover, and prefer to see these costs as, essentially ‘cost of production’. The cash flow model. It does require a lot of trust, however, that when the lease comes up for renewal the fees won’t be usurious.
Neither is necessarily wrong. A whole lot of folks are starting to realize the downsides of expenses coming out of cashflow though! And losing a lot of trust.