Local-first software (2019)

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.

Correct. SaaS is a business model, not a technical concept. But the real problem is that there is no equivalent business model for selling local first software. Traditional desktop apps were single purchase items. Local first is not because you just navigate to a website in your browser and blammo you get the software. What we need is a way to make money off of local first software.

SaaS is a business model. Cloud is DRM. If you run the software in the cloud it can't be pirated and there is perfect lock-in. Double if the data can't be exported.

Related: I've been incubating an idea for a while that open source, as it presently stands, is largely an ecosystem that exists in support of cloud SaaS. This is quite paradoxical because cloud SaaS is by far the least free model for software -- far, far less free than closed source commercial local software.

It's the missing middle. A manager can just expense $25/mo, while $2000 requires an approval process, which requires outside sales, which means it really costs at least $20,000.

Yes, this is the main reason for doing "cloud" I believe. Otherwise, it would make no sense for someone like Adobe to adopt this model, since the softwares still largely require to run locally for technical reasons.

It's the same thing as the subscriptions for movies like Netflix, except at least in the last case we can fight back with various means (and it's not a necessity).

The SaaS model is basically a perfect racketeering setup, I think it should be outlawed at least philosophically. There is no way business is not going to abuse that power and they have already shown as much...

I agree with your sentiment on Open Source. I think like many of these types of things, it lives in contradictions. In any case, Linux as it is today, couldn't exist without the big commercial players paying quite a bit to get it going.

Ha! If only that were true. I gave up on my effort to buy a one year license for $25 after filling out too many TPS reports. Which is probably part of the design of the system.

> there is no equivalent business model for selling local first software.

Sure there is: “$500 upfront or $21/mo for 24 months *”

* if you don’t complete you 24 payments, we freeze your license.

So Local-first DRM then?

I'm not understanding why we have to have a model that replicates SaaS pricing for local-first software?

Obsidian is doing a pretty good job selling sync functionality to their free client. Because the have a really good markdown editor implementation IMHO with community plug-in support that IMHO beats every PKM cloud tool out there that competes with them.

> What we need is a way to make money off of local first software.

No, what we need is a way for people to not starve so that they don't have to make money at all and can focus instead on their passion project(s). Cough UBI cough

This is the canonical example I believe. The product is ~35 years old.

https://www.gpsoft.com.au/

Just need to find a lamp with a genie inside first.

I've never understood the end goal of a UBI. If the expectation is that everyone should be able to eat (seems like a noble goal), why obfuscate that by giving people money rather than access to free food?

If we really wanted a system where we deem certain items essential and went everyone to have access to them, it makes no sense to pay for them. Money may still make sense for nonessential or luxury items, but it just gets in the way if the government has to give me money so I can go spend it on the food they actually want me to have.

I can't speak for every UBI supporter, but singling out food, and talking about “the food they want me to have”, suggests an authoritarian top-down structure that nobody wants. The whole point of UBI is to enable autonomy. People should be free to explore and understand what their own needs are and not have it be dictated.

I'll admit that I was unclear because I used the word “starve” in my message. Obviously this choice of word was borne out of the principle that food is among the most vital basic needs, and that depriving people of it is one prominent way in which our current society is cruel. Nevertheless, UBI is not about just food, but more generally about basic needs.

The amount if UBI paid to people must be based on some determination of the estimated cost of a list of basic goods though, right?

Surely it wouldn't just be food, but regardless the government would be coming up with a list of items and basing the UBI on that. If those items are deemed necessary enough that everyone should have access, why not make them freely available rather than abstracting through money first?

It would indeed be nice if everything were just freely available to everyone, but barring that, a good first step is to let everyone partake in a fair share of everything, which is what UBI enables. Again, you're still thinking in terms of top-down authoritarianism: you're thinking somebody needs to make a list of things that we need and then dictate that to us. Instead, we want to make our own decisions. The amount of UBI should depend on what's available, not on what someone up high thinks we need.

A UBI is dependent on a top down approach by design, that seems like a given here.

For a UBI to exist the government has to define some kind of system for how to set the basic income level, I assume they would define a basket of goods (and services) similar to how CPI is calculated and define a formula for how the UBI is calculated from there. One way or another, someone in the government would be coming up with a list of what is "essential" and deciding how much to subsidize.

They would also need to similarly define how the UBI is adjusted over time. Prices change over time, and there would likely be a pretty quick jump in prices when the UBI is first put into effect.

All that to say, we will never have a UBI without it being centrally planned from the top. Whether it is authoritarian or not would be up for debate, it can be centrally planned and pushed from the top down without being authoritarian - unless one thinks we're already authoritarian, most of our current federal programs would fit into that category.