[xionon]

> Notably, text editors from 30 years ago still work fantastically. Email clients from 30 years ago still mostly work great (unless using certain popular anti-consumer cloud email providers).

What text editors and mail clients are you using regularly that (a) you paid for and (b) have not been regularly updated for 30 years and (c) still work on modern systems with modern file types and file systems?

To be direct, I highly suspect that any 30 year old applications you're referencing receive regular updates, are tragically underfunded, and the developers would ultimately benefit from upgrade or subscription pricing.

Of course, everyone loves a free lunch, but someone had to pay for the sandwiches.

[inetknght]

> What text editors and mail clients are you using regularly that (a) you paid for

None. The text editors and mail clients I use are free. They have been regularly updated for 30 years. And they still work on modern systems with modern file types and file systems.

Where appropriate, I do purchase and donate. Mozilla, Wikipedia, and some direct payments to certain developers, for example.

Thunderbird is good software. Vim, grep, and xterm are among the best text utilities in the world. Or, if you want, emacs.

> To be direct, I highly suspect that any 30 year old applications you're referencing receive regular updates, are tragically underfunded, and the developers would ultimately benefit from upgrade or subscription pricing.

I appreciate your directness.

Apps that don't to follow the latest anti-consumer trend don't need to be updated with new features every few months. They don't need bug fixes twice a day. Their development costs are massively less. And their development is often done because the developer needed the tool anyway. I'd call them altruistic. But I think a lot of apps would do better with more pro-consumer behaviors.