An interesting news story in The Register talks about research indicating that software vendors are considering changing their licensing model to subscription based licensing rather than one-off purchases.
Currently, around 75 per cent of vendors' revenues come from traditional licensing methods, whereby a licence is purchased once and held in perpetuity. For the customer this means a large capital expenditure up-front, even if the software turns out to be obsolete, before it has justified its purchase price. For the vendor, this means a one-off payment for their product, even if the software is extremely productive for the client over a long period.
Isn't this what they are doing now anyways? Most companies release new versions of their software once a year, add a couple more features, and make it incompatible with previous versions, forcing you to upgrade. This just sounds like the same thing worded differently..
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