alt Hacker NewsThe entire thing is because of subscription revenue.
It’s self reinforcing because those companies that get subscription revenue have both more revenue and higher valuations enabling more fund raising, causing them to beat out companies that do not follow this model. This is why local first software died.
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The root cause of the problem is that it's easier to make personalized stuff with server/backend (?cloud?) than without maybe?
Example: I made a firefox extension that automatically fills forms using LLM. It's fully offline (except OPTIONALLY) the LLM part, optionally because it also supports Ollama locally.
Now the issue is that it's way too hard for most people to use: find the LLM to run, acquire it somehow (pay to run it online or download it to run in Ollama) gotta configure your API url, enter API key, save all of your details for form fulling locally in text files which you then have to backup and synchronize to other devices yourself.
The alternative would be: create account, give money, enter details and all is synced and backedup automatically accross devices, online LLM pre-selected and configured. Ready to go. No messing around with Ollama or openrouter, just go.
I don't know how to solve it in a local way that would be as user friendly as the subscription way would be.
Now things like cars and washing machines are a different story :p
Pretty much greed being a universally destructive force in the world as usual.
When Apple joined the madness, all hopes where lost (that was a long time ago now, sight)
I remember seeing somebody summarize this as "SaaS is a pricing model" or "SaaS is financialization" and it totally rings true. Compared to normal software pricing, a subscription gives you predictable recurring revenue and a natural sort of price discrimination (people who use your system more, pay more). It's also a psychological thing: folks got anchored on really low up-front prices for software, so paying $2000 for something up-front sounds crazy even if you use it daily for years, but paying $25/month feels reasonable. (See also how much people complain about paying $60 for video games which they play for thousands of hours!)
It's sad because the dynamics and incentives around clear, up-front prices seem generally better than SaaS (more user control, less lock-in), but almost all commercial software morphs into SaaS thanks to a mix of psychology, culture and market dynamics.
There are other advantages to having your software and data managed by somebody else, but they are far less determinative than structural and pricing factors. In a slightly different world, it's not hard to imagine relatively expensive software up-front that comes with a smaller, optional (perhaps even third-party!) subscription service for data storage and syncing. It's a shame that we do not live in that world.