[wmichelin]

To play devil's advocate here, clearly there are hosting costs and maintenance costs beyond a one time mobile app payment 14 years ago.

Kinda sped read the article so apologies if I missed it, but why does the author here feel so entitled to something that clearly the company feels unreasonable to continuously maintain? They're clearly a struggling business, it feels like this author has a personal vendetta against the company and would rather they go out of business than break a 14 year old promise made from an entirely different internet economy era.

[derektank]

I think it is sort of incumbent upon you, as a business offering a lifetime membership, to properly invest some of that initial fee, such that the returns cover future operating costs. Many other companies work on this model.

If the bank refused to return the money I loaned them, I would rightfully be very upset. I think it's similarly fair to be upset about a company revoking lifetime memberships.

This particular situation is more of a grey area, but I don't think maintenance and operating costs are a sufficient excuse.

[JumpCrisscross]

> it is sort of incumbent upon you, as a business offering a lifetime membership, to properly invest some of that initial fee, such that the returns cover future operating costs

We may need a law that regulates "lifetime" purchases. One part is standardised disclosure. The other is putting fees into a trust.

[johanyc]

> as a business offering a lifetime membership

> If the bank refused to return the money I loaned them, I would rightfully be very upset.

Everyone who bought the app STILL have access to the app. All features they paid for are still available (except if you consider no ad a feature).

The "correct" way to do it is change current app to classic and release a new app but that's quite cumbersome. I would like Apple or Google to offer an option to provide paid upgrade options.

[jszymborski]

> why does the author here feel so entitled

People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app.

Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers.

Now, they've introduced ads.

Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.

[fluidcruft]

The company could also go bankrupt and shutdown. Lifetime subscriptions are nice but notice that in other real-world transactions say a "lifetime warranty" on a stove or whatever is defined as the expected lifetime of the device. I agree that "lifetime" is deceptive marketing, but it's not unusual marketing. It is a bit unusual perhaps that there isn't a defined term for the life of the software or service.

[Wurdan]

To my knowledge reneging only applies when it's a voluntary decision. A company that has been sold by its previous owner for generating a 800k loss is not doing much of anything by choice. It's just fighting insolvency.

[fullstop]

> but grandfathered in previous purchasers

If you bought the app only you weren't grandfathered into anything. You needed to have also bought the web player.

[carlosjobim]

I hope you never hear about free refills that they have in some restaurants.

You're demanding more than a decade of free app updates for a small sum you paid ages ago. Why can't you instead be happy with all the value you got from the app? We aren't born to be small minded and stingy, look up to greater goals and a greater attitude in life. We only have so many years before it is cut from us.

[toofy]

it seems to me that we desperately need to get back to a place where a business is held to their word.

we have come to a place where corporations are calling limited “unlimited” and outright just lying to people.

i have seen people unironically defend this as “well if they don’t lie, then how do you expect them to sell their product?” again, people have said this entirely unironically.

i think it’s far more reasonable to expect a company to be held to their contracts and agreements. normal people certainly are.

i’ll never understand how we got to a place where so many corporations can say with a straight face “we deserve to make money in any way possible and it’s unfair for you to hold us to any kind of responsibility for our own actions”

[mrheosuper]

Back in the day, Pepsi had an ads that claim you can win a Jet fighter if you do xxx. A guy did xxx and tried to get the Jet, but of course he couldn't and sue them. The court let Pepsi win.

So, "a place where a business is held to their word" has never been existed.

[vorpalhex]

What is PocketCasts maintaining?

1. A few kb of playlists and accounts 2. Probably a search service 3. Likely artwork caching

It's not free to run this.. but it's not exactly expensive either.

Many users pay and don't use the app very much. I am sure there are some super users who use a lot.

And most apps continue to sell, make enough income to fund a few devs and keep the services on. Even with a one time payment.

It's not like pocketcasts is paying the podcasters or producing content.

The problem is seeing every single dumb thing as some kind of mega-growth M&A deal when it's not. No, your podcast app won't make you hundreds of millions, sorry.

[photomatt]

We don't disclose Pocket Casts revenue directly, but we invest $millions a year in its development and hosting. It gets very broad usage and has over ten million of listening hours a week. There are clients maintained and new features developed for iPhone, iPad, MacOS, Apple Watch, Android Phones and Tablets, and an open web version.

[UmGuys]

The company sold an app and refuses to honor what users paid for. If this is allowed, it will become a strategy because it's profitable. Trick people to purchase, then add ads to the 'ad-free' app. There's no logic other than, "we can steal and no one will stop us." They should be forced to honor purchases or publish a new app.

[CharlesW]

Is Automattic a struggling business? Also, podcasters are paying for media hosting. Automattic presumably hosts a catalog service, but it can’t be that expensive to run.

[cwyers]

`Is Automattic a struggling business?`

I mean, everytime I see someone talking about them on Twitter, they are clearly struggling with _something_.

[renewiltord]

There's no reasonable devil's advocate. The answer is that one-time fee apps are not sustainable. There are ongoing costs with most businesses and one-time fees do not capture that. Therefore don't sell them. Sell everything on subscription or you will eventually fail to serve your customers and everyone will be unhappy. If you're a big business, it's risky to buy open-source applications, so don't do that unless the benefit is obvious.

They promised a thing they could not deliver on and that was sufficient to get enough users that they could then sell the app onwards to a bunch of suckers. This is a classic play in the "sell dollars for pennies and then sell the dollars-for-pennies app to a guy with a lot of dollars who eventually gets sick of buying pennies with dollars" genre.

[mcv]

The one time fee doesn't pay for your ongoing costs, but it does pay for your upfront costs. The trick is to either get other users to pay for your ongoing costs, or to reduce ongoing costs and stop further development.

[theshrike79]

One time cost per major version is sustainable, you won't get Silicon Valley rich on it, but you can make a living.

Lifetime licenses only work in the beginning when you have people buying them at regular intervals, at some point the market is saturated and you need to have a subscription model.

Case in point: Unraid. I have two grandfathered "forever" licenses and I'll never need a third.

[muppetman]

Because we paid to not have to put up with this garbage. There's so many better ways to do this - look at nzb360 - https://nzb360.com/

They added a new/better interface you have to pay money to unlock. When they add new features/services you now have to pay to unlock. What you paid for originally, still yours. Want to get access to the new stuff? You can either pay a subscription for "everything" or pay one-time-unlocks for features.

Then I look at serviecs like lichess where they just operate 100% on donations and users helping by adding their devices into the pool of compute for analysis.

"Shove ads in" is the low, easiest, tackiest way to "annoy" your users into paying. Those that already paid once are annoyed the goalposts have changed. Make the app worth paying an upgrade for, don't just go "well it's still shit but now there's ads unless you pay!"

[zmmmmm]

> why does the author here feel so entitled

Because they paid for it.

[galaxy_gas]

Automattic are struggling business ?

[wahnfrieden]

You will renege on a contract if it’s inconvenient to honor it? Good to know.

[gigel82]

It's so sad this view is supported by so many people. So incredibly sad, especially in this community... I feel like we're doomed to become the dreaded "you will own nothing and be happy" society that the technofeudal lords so drool over.

[rmunn]

If you don't honor contracts, then you should go out of business, because nobody will trust you (if they're wise, though there are always some people/companies who will be foolish).

If you make a contract that involves you receiving a one-time fee for something that will cost you far more than that fee, then you will eventually go out of business for being stupid.

Yes, there are hosting costs and maintenance costs. So the original deal (pay once for something that costs us ongoing money) was a stupid business decision. Doesn't change the fact that they undertook to make that contract. So now they should be held to it.

And the fact that someone else bought them does not invalidate the contract. When you acquire a business, you acquire their contractual obligations. As it should be, otherwise contracts cannot be trusted in the long run.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

Well, does anyone actually have a copy of the contract from 14 years ago? Usually there are clauses hedging against this kind of thing.

Example: I recently wrote the T&S for my Finnish dictionary app (still working on it), and I make it clear in advance that the license was a one time fee for perpetual use for that major version. [1]

I can do this because the app is almost entirely offline, and because for the parts that are, smart cloud infra decisions means my recurring infra costs are low. If I add in features which imply a bespoke server down the line, of course that would probably be a major version upgrade - and a change in the pricing model to boot. But I'd still keep the old v1 stuff up for the lifers.

[1]: https://taskusanakirja.com/terms-of-service/#91-pricing-and-...

[simultsop]

If people/companies want to support a thing they think should exist, it is their sacrifice to keep it alive. I don't think as them being stupid.

For the concerns of contracts, you are not alone on the suffering side. Alltogether humanity elevated tolerance to this level, this is not a surprise.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If you don't honor contracts, then you should go out of business

We're talking about Automattic. It's virtually their business model.