Pay forever, own nothing! What’s not to love?

It brings up a question I always ask: Who owns your data?

If you have to keep paying someone in order to access your data/app/work, then you don’t really own your data, they do.

Subscription models are just another version of vendor lock-in, which has been a known risk of using proprietary software for decades. Vendor lock-in was one of the primary motivators for the free software movement.

Once the vendor starts blocking me from access to my own intellectual property though, that’s a deal-breaker. First it’s a moral outrage. Second, for people who won’t factor morals into their business decisions, it’s an extreme and unacceptable business risk. Now that we have a word for “ransomware,” we can call the subscription model what it is.

I know people will say “such-and-such company will never kill such-and-such app.” Never is very long time. People used to say General Motors would never go bankrupt, or Lotus would never kill Lotus 1–2–3.

No deal. Even if the subscription were “free.” I’m looking at you, Google.