Introducing ONCE, a new line of software products from 37signals: Pay one time, own forever.

FlumPHP@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 137 points –
Introducing ONCE
once.com
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Ya'll remember Windows, right? I know Microsoft catches all the shade when it comes to FOSS, but you know, it had this same model: 3.1, 95, 98, SE, 2001, XP, 8, 10... And to this day that is why you have industrial machinery run on windows 98. Buy it once. It's yours.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that anymore. Products have to work in an ecosystem now. When MS got slammed with anti-trust cases, it forced the ecosystem out into the open, for better or worse, and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle. Sure, pay for it once, own it. But that kind of payment model doesn't congeal with our way of life anymore. Five years from now, are you gonna be able to use whatever the fuck this company is selling with whatever is just released on the market? Not if you haven't paid the company to provide 5 years worth of updates.

So, yeah, celebrate your nostalgic payment system and throw your money away on a product that will be obsolete before it pays for itself.

It's not like you own your Windows copy though - you are not allowed to do anything with it you want.
You have to use free - as in freedom - software, like provided by gnu.org

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