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222 points richbowen | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.301s | 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. ghoshbishakh ◴[] No.43524953[source]
Services should not be sold as a one time deal. If it is a product as a service such that the product can be distributed to the user directly, then it seems fine. For example, I run https://pinggy.io , and I can't think of any way to sell it in a life time deal.