[HN Gopher] Write "Freehold" Software
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Write "Freehold" Software
Author : rjinman
Score : 46 points
Date : 2025-07-26 15:54 UTC (7 days ago)
(HTM) web link (deadbeef.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (deadbeef.io)
| ktallett wrote:
| I completely agree with the "freehold" principle, and it's how I
| exclusively release any of my work however how we get back there
| for the majority I just don't know. The only apps I know that are
| a success in the modern day that are using that model is
| Goodnotes that saves repurchase for significant updates which I
| think is acceptable, and Affinity design apps. I sense many feel
| their business model is better suited to subscriptions and the
| lapsed subscription fee is also valuable. It's likely a societal
| change whereby many are not happy to spend significant upfront
| costs on software now. Even a small amount on an app can be
| thought of as too much.
| Paradigm2020 wrote:
| As it stands right now the freehold category is unnecessarily
| restrictive, eliminating some great, fair price, games.
|
| Polytopia for example would not be considered "freehold" because
| it contains one of micro transactions... However those are in a
| way ~ expansions like when you bought StarCraft II expansions.
|
| The freehold apps website I'd never contribute to as one should
| always separate a vendor from a marketplace... Otherwise you just
| end up with Amazon basics....
| ktallett wrote:
| Polytopia sells both skins and extra content as dlc so it's
| rightfully not included. Just as I expect SC2 is not included
| for the same reason. However I would agree, I feel freehold
| should go along with drm free
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| I enjoy this idea, but it's undercut somewhat by the author
| asking ChatGPT to define the term they're writing a post about
| define.
|
| I'm not sure what the anecdote is meant to add, either. ChatGPT
| and other hosted LLMs seem to be the antithesis of "freehold
| software."
|
| Am I missing something?
| rjinman wrote:
| I wasn't asking it to define it. I came up with the list of
| principles first, then spent ages trying to think of a suitable
| name for them. It was quite gratifying when ChatGPT, without
| any context, when asked to guess what the term "freehold" might
| mean with respect to software, came up with almost the exact
| same set of principles. That told me that the "freehold" term
| is a pretty good fit. It would be an incredible coincidence
| otherwise.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| Oh, I see, almost rubber-ducking the semantic meaning of the
| term. That makes more sense to me. Apologies for my knee-jerk
| LLM skepticism.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I approach this dichotomy with two tiers of software: "core
| functionality" and "nice to have". For items that have become
| core, I have a fallback I can use that is something I have a
| high degree of control over. This is typically something like
| freehold software, although I'm more extreme and very strongly
| prefer libre software.
|
| But in cases where the functionality is quite compelling (like
| multi-hundred billion parameter models) and also hard to run on
| hardware I control, I tend to relent, and work with the "nice
| to haves" so I can learn about them and leverage them, but I
| routinely practice with my fallback software.
|
| One example: I use Google Maps for search because it's so darn
| good at it, but I regularly use OsmAnd~ or Organic Maps with
| offline maps and on-device routing for actual navigation
| (despite the lack of traffic insights!) so I'm proficient with
| them in case I need to ditch Google Maps entirely (due to
| policy change, technical issue, or something else).
| acuozzo wrote:
| I grew up in Freehold, NJ. Would this make any Freehold software
| I write Freehold2x?
| throwpoaster wrote:
| There is a cost-revenue pairing issue with traditional software
| business models: if someone pays upfront, how do you pay to
| deliver bug fixes? In games that offer any kind of multi it's
| worse because you have continued server costs as well.
|
| One could say, for example, "ship bug free" or perhaps more
| reasonably, "include the net present value of future costs". Both
| of those are essentially infeasible.
|
| Subscription model software one-shots the cost-revenue pairing
| issue.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Support contract if you want updates, or limited free support
| for critical bugs. If you want the next major with more feature
| you pay again.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Welcome back to the 90s; I miss that model of software, as do
| a lot of people. When you buy something, you still have that
| something. It may become obsolete in time but as long as you
| have the hardware/OS that can run it, you still have access
| to it.
|
| I worked in a daycare center when I was in my teens. I saw a
| kid (doing a kid thing) with a bag of skittles. He was giving
| it out to his friends but licking each skittle as he handed
| them out. I did put a stop to it but I had to stop chuckling
| to myself at the faces everyone made when getting a pre-
| licked skittle first. Fast forward a few decades and software
| subscriptions remind me of that moment, every single time.
| dceddia wrote:
| Sketch, CleanShot, and Jetbrains come to mind as software
| that uses this model. It seems the most fair to me: pay once,
| get forever usage of the software, and one year of free
| updates. After that, additional years of updates are often a
| discounted rate.
|
| An issue I ran into when I tried this with my software is
| that it's not a very common model so people didn't really get
| it. They'd call it a subscription, or they'd call it
| lifetime, and some got very angry when I mentioned anything
| about renewing for updates.
|
| It's a hard thing to describe succinctly, and it's even
| harder to ensure that description survives the game of
| telephone as they tell their friends/followers.
| john01dav wrote:
| An easy way to solve this, at least long term and
| collectively, is to have a new term that refers to this
| model. I'd call it "the JetBrains model".
| dceddia wrote:
| In my case there's not really one product I can expect
| everyone to know about, but I think this works well when
| there's an existing big product in the category to point
| to as an example.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > An issue I ran into when I tried this with my software is
| that it's not a very common model so people didn't really
| get it.
|
| Instead of a years updates, which is a bit amorphous in
| terms of actual value delivered over the time frame, an
| alternate is you buy a major version, get all updates to
| that for free, for as long as it is updated in any way,
| including bug fixes.
|
| Then pay for the next major version, only if you want to
| (with a discount for owners of the previous one).
|
| And put the major version number into the name of the
| software, i.e. "Digibrain 1", "Digibrain 2", ...
|
| Then continue to sell version X-1 at a discount, after X is
| released, to get more sales from the lower end of the
| market. And so owners of X-1 can still feel the love and
| less "out of date". Or even all previous versions at log
| drops in price. And bug fix old versions indefinitely,
| which is very purchaser friendly.
|
| Another choice would be selling new updates for a
| noticeably higher price initially, signaling it as
| "premium", not "we want more of your money", then bringing
| the price down before the next update.
|
| Might not connect with everyone, but it makes the value and
| optionality of purchasing an update more apparent.
|
| Obviously, updates better be worth it.
| immibis wrote:
| This provides an incentive to make every version major.
| layer8 wrote:
| So it's "free" as in "hold my beer"?
| Nevermark wrote:
| No it's "free", after you pay for it.
|
| Which in any other industry would be a paradoxical,
| tautological contradiction.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is sort of funny that the one type of software that manages to
| get any momentum behind it for this sort of thing--games--is
| really pointless (I enjoy games too, I just don't think
| preserving most of them is a big deal).
|
| For work software, it definitely should be able to run locally
| and without any license server or whatever. I'm baffled by people
| who don't feel the need to own their tools. Open Source software
| mostly seems to fill this gap for me, but like most of the folks
| here, I only really need programming tools, which are over-
| represented in the open source ecosystem for obvious reasons.
|
| Proprietary "freehold" software, I dunno. It could be
| interesting. I guess I kinda feel like: if your software isn't
| going to do DRM, talk to license servers, or whatever, I guess
| your business model must include the fact that people will
| probably make unauthorized copies of your software. So, maybe
| just open source it? Then you have the classic "building a
| business on my open source library" problem, which is very hard,
| but at least you have lots of company.
| dpassens wrote:
| The big difference between open source and proprietary but
| freehold seems to be precisely that those copies are
| unauthorized. That already eliminates most of your competition
| as nobody else can sell your software and distributions can't
| just distribute it. Sure, people will pirate, but even DRM
| doesn't seem to prevent that.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| The term the author is looking for is Freeware or Shareware.
|
| In today's world the equivalent is FOSS. You don't really have
| ownership of software if you can't modify it, or pay someone else
| to. Not having source code is itself a sort of DRM.
| dpassens wrote:
| No, the author explicitly mentions that paid software would
| also meet those definitions, provided you only need to pay
| once.
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