Software As a Service
A family member decided to replace a mechanical hard drive with a solid state disk (SSD). A fresh install of Windows was performed rather than cloning the disk partitions. The person then installed respective software packages.
One particular proprietary package needs to connect upstream to the mother ship to create the license hash. With this fresh installation the software refused to connect.
Or seemed not to connect.
Nominal testing showed the computer was connecting to the internet. I suspected the upstream servers for this proprietary software were either configured incorrectly or intentionally configured to ignore older versions of the software.
Further digging revealed the developer no longer offered the software with perpetual licenses. All licenses were “software as a service” requiring an annual subscription. I told the family member about my suspicions that the upstream servers simply no longer responded to any other license validation request.
That familiar economics model: old software is bad — force, coerce, or trick users to update to new software.
Software as a service? License subscriptions?
How parasitical.
Posted: Category: Commentary Tagged: General
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