Buy once, use forever A directory of one-time purchase software

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.

> 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"?

No, and this is a valid reason for a subscription pricing model.

However, if the software does not need its base / local functionality to reach out to servers, then it should have a one-time (per version, more for major upgrades) price and a separate subscription price.

Personal example: I purchased YNAB4 and was happy with it. Would gladly have purchased YNAB5, but 5 had all sorts of cloud-y functionality that I had no interest or use for. I just wanted a decent local app for expense tracking and 4 had that but 5 did not.

In a similar vein there is a whole bunch of tax-filing software in Canada available , but all (?) of the free stuff is online, which I have no interesting in doing:

* https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/...

So I pay about CA$ 20 for Studio Tax so that I can have things completely local (CRA is piloting their free tax filing system, we'll see if third-party stuff will be needed in the future).