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222 points richbowen | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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danpalmer ◴[] No.43520272[source]
Serious question, because I'm not sure how I feel about it... should software with a server-side component that needs to keep working be counted as "buy once"? We've seen so many cases of companies going out of business or just deciding that it's no longer worth running these services, and leaving customers with no recourse.

An example from this list: LocalCan – https://buyoncesoftware.com/localcan – there's a server-side component (which is why ngrok its competitor is subscription based). If this component disappears the app ceases to function.

The flip side to this is that just because an app is entirely local doesn't mean it will work as the software around it gets updated (OSes etc), so if a company decides to stop supporting it, that too is useless in a way. It's not the same because running it on the machine you had when you bought it would still work, but that's not how we use computers in practice. Perhaps this is a different case because many of these "buy once" would charge for a major update like that anyway.

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1. mjevans ◴[] No.43520415[source]
Steam is just about the only 'DRM' I'm willing to accept in this area. Both because I suspect there won't be an issue within my lifetime, and that if there IS an issue within my lifetime the outcry will be so huge that anything I wanted to get off of it will have 'alternative work arounds'. E.G. either at that point Steam allows a close-out download that doesn't have the DRM, or similarly freed versions would exist.

For everything else, I prefer free to license and use forever where possible. Like Linux and LibreOffice.