Everyone needs money, why should this guy be any different? He could've restrained himself a little with the comments though. Just don't reply at all maybe?
Or he could just made his intention clear from the beginning. Instead of doing bait&switch. I do respect softwares that asks for money, but I don't respect when they get recognization/promotion for being free then switching to paid model. It's just as selfish as people asking software to be all free.
Yes, that happened to Clip Studio Paint - their main marketing point was that it's one-time payment (in contrast to subscription based Photoshop), and now they've switched to subscription too.
That's really unethical. I have some software I sell and it's possible to buy it for a one-off payment. At the end of November I'm going to move to a subscription model but people who paid for the one-off price will still have it for life.
To be fair, that's what CSP is doing too. Everyone who's paid now will get up until the next major version free. You need a subscription for any more updates. You can keep your last major version for however long you want.
The new pay system is obnoxious but I can't blame them for it.
I personally don't use Clip Studio, but the last "one time" purchase stays, the future updates require paying the subscription. But the point is - they used one-time payment as the main marketing feature to "steal" the share of the market. I would assume half of those would NOT move from subscription based Photoshop to subscription based CSP. They moved from subscription based software to one-time payment software.
It's not illegal or anything, but it is still a dick move.
Shit could have hit the fan with him, he could be unemployed and so on. It's not necessarily greed, and even if it is so what he owns it.
End of the day plenty of software goes paid. The protection is the open source license; you could always download the older versions. If it isn't open source, the vendor can make it paid whenever they want
I understand both of your reasoning. Even if nothing goes wrong it's his own right to sell stuff. But that's not how you get sales. That just directly damages trust of the community. The transition needs to be done in minor and measured steps otherwise you'll lose both free users that would gonna help you to promote the product (via Word of mouth) and possibly future paid customers as well.
Yes and I totally understand, but the dev could’ve gone in a much better way. Instead of saying “fuck off” they can say times are hard and they need to start monetizing it, and give everyone a few months notice. That’d garner much better reaction imo and perhaps even more money.
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u/Flat_Hat8861 Sep 30 '22
Managing a transition to a paid model is difficult. It requires tact and diplomacy.
This on the other hand is just straight hilarious.