i loathe our subscription based life
While I understand the sentiment for software that’s set in stone like a specific version of Photoshop released 20 years ago or the average finished single-player game today, I think Vikunja, like most projects that are still under development, is not quite like that. For some things, subscriptions just make more sense than one-time payments.
Subscriptions have the potential of making the price more fair for different users.[1] I don’t think I can know how much a piece of software is worth to me the first time I look at it, as I have no idea for how long I will use it, but I have some idea how much having it for a month would be worth. Then, if I give up on it after just one month, I didn’t waste too much money, and if I use it for a decade, I paid a sum that I’d never agree to as a one-time payment. This incentivizes developers to make something that’s actually good rather than just marketable.
I’m not defending subscriptions as the better business model, but if I’m to support the continuous development of Vikunja because I use it, I’d rather pay a small amount every month while using it than guessing how much the fair “lifetime” price would be.
Regarding marketing, I think Vikunja is an attractive proposition as long as it focuses on being easy to self-host, secure, and reliable. A project this small will not win feature table wars against teams with dozens of developers, and I don’t think it should try to.
Of course, that’s not why so much commercial software today is subscription-based, but that doesn’t invalidate the point in general. ↩︎