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If you shoot video in a National Park -- and someone, anyone ever earns money from that video -- the National Park Service wants some of that money.
It ain't right.
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Can I get in on this? I want some of the money for watching the video. 
Jeremy Falcon
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raddevus wrote: However, if you compare this to a car
But I'm not, I'm comparing it to watching TV at home.
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So if I buy a truck for my delivery service, is it your contention that I should pay a royalty or license fee to the truck's manufacturer?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Back in the day when you bought software, you installed it and it never changed after that point. Now most software is updated regularly for bugs and security reasons. Those updates are work for the software company and it makes sense that the end user would have to pay for that.
I'm not defending that Oracle licensing though. That sounds pretty shady and desperate.
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In the past (and even now), there was/is an annual maintenance contract with the software vendor that paid for upgrades and bug fixes.
It is like buying an extended warranty for your car.
My question remains: what justifies per-user pricing?
PS. I brought in Oracle as an example of egregious business practices that is enabled by per-user pricing.
modified 2-Aug-24 9:25am.
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Vivi Chellappa wrote: what justifies per-user pricing?
If a school purchases text books, they need to pay for each copy that they buy, even though the content of each book is the same.
What's the difference with software?
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I don't agree with the per employee of your company bit...but per user of the software seems like a good way to account for the constant upkeep of the software. What else would be a fair way to do it? If I want to use some software for my small business of 4 people, I should have to pay the same as a huge corporation of thousands? Per user is at least proportional.
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Vivi Chellappa wrote: In the past (and even now), there was/is an annual maintenance contract with the software vendor that paid for upgrades and bug fixes.
Not sure you mean by "past" but no that is not true.
Big iron applications, far as I know had contracts. The contract covered the iron and the software. For big iron 3rd party software (like Oracle) I suspect there were contracts also.
For personal computers when you bought Lotus 1-2-3, it was yours. After a bit software of some sorts offered an upgrade which meant you paid less if you had the prior version. Some companies did that. That was true regardless of whether it was personal use, small business or large business. The only 'contracts' associated with that was that if you bought enough copies you could negotiate a lower price. There was no service at all.
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Kschuler wrote: when you bought software, you installed it and it never changed after that point.
Well in over 50 years in this industry I never worked on any software like that. The frequency of updates may not have been as often as now, but it still happened quite regularly.
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Well obviously so am I. 50 years ago the internet was still quite a long way off.
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45 years ago, in the UK, we used JANet (Joint Academic Network) to update software and that ultimately became part of the internet so it wasn't so far off 50 years ago. I can't remember when ARPANet was set up...
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Back in the 60s I worked for Shell-Mex and BP. We had two computer centres, one in Manchester (Wythenshawe) and one in Hemel Hempstead. Once a week we needed to exchange data between the two. So each centre loaded all the data onto 3/4 inch magnetic tapes, boxed them up and popped them into a taxi. The two taxis then made their way to a rendezvous point in Birmingham where they exchanged boxes. The new tapes were then delivered to their destinations. Our centre in Wythenshawe had earlier (i.e. less advanced) systems than Hemel, so if they forgot and wrote their tapes in "high density" we could not read them. Happy days!
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So big iron.
Presumably the companies had a full service contract with the iron company and quite likely only ran software from those companies as well.
Did the employees of your company run those updates or did the employees of the iron company run the updates?
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This was in the days before magnetic drums and disks, and main memory was 16K of magnetic cores. Every morning we would reload the OS from the master magnetic tape, before starting the commercial programs. When the manufacturer created an update they would just send us a new tape. All input data came from punched paper tape or cards, and was processed in batches. One of the joys of the night shift was getting all the invoices printed, decollated and cut, ready for delivery. We could then repair to the canteen and play cards until the end of the shift.
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Around 1980 I first heard the saying, "A truckload of magnetic tape tape has a tremendous bandwidth". Later, I learned that the saying is several years older.
I'd like to do a real, up to date calculation based on, say 128 TB SD cards. What is the weight of an SD card? (I don't have a scale handling those ranges!) How much can you load into a truck? 20 tons? 40 tons?
I guess that a container ship of SD cards would beat the combined capacity of all the Trans-Atlantic optic fibers.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Except now every time I turn on my TV I have to install an update... literally. And to top if off, my TV shows me ads. All for updates I never wanted for crap I don't use... just to watch TV.
Jeremy Falcon
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Vivi Chellappa wrote: What justifies differential pricing based on number of users?
I don't agree with differential pricing when it comes to greed. But, I think scaling pricing is great if it's done ethically. It gives smaller companies a chance to play ball. But, only if done ethically and not out of greed. Dunno about this situation in particular.
I will say though that greed based pricing differences have been around for a while now. Hotels, Airlines, etc. will charge you more if you buy a ticket from an affluent area, for instance. So, the greed part is nothing new it's just being expressed through software now that the tech giants have fully embraced the dark side.
Jeremy Falcon
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has nothing to do with greed. $$ is $$.
You don't have to buy it.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Yeah ok... charging an exorbitant amount for something has nothing to do with greed. Not sure you know what that word means. 
Jeremy Falcon
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charlieg wrote: Smarty pants
Guilty.
charlieg wrote: My point is that it's a free market. Don't like the price? Don't buy it
Right, but that has nothing to do with greed, which was what I was talking about. If anything is more do with supply and demand. Which are indirectly based on fear and greed but that aren't directly the same thing.
charlieg wrote: When companies do this, they are circling the wagons because their cheese is about to be moved.
I'm not sure what that metaphor means. I assume it means they're getting desparate and if so, would lend credence to my original point you seem to be trying to discredit. 
Side note, it's in poor taste for unsolicited book recommendations. It's presumptuous and assumes I know little of the subject. I can promise you, nothing could be further from the truth.
charlieg wrote: But if the OP is upset, they need to take it up with senior leadership.
This has nothing to do with greed being the driving factor behind a lot of new pricing models.
Jeremy Falcon
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Vivi Chellappa wrote: What makes software different from common household goods such as TV, automobiles, etc?
I'd say you're not giving enough weight to the distinction between tangibles and intangibles. Tangibles have limited lifetimes; automobiles, TVs, microwave ovens, smart phones, groceries, etc., eventually need replacing, often because some folks like to have the latest 'thing'. There's an on-going market for new widgets.
The sales model for tangibles is not sustainable for software over time. Once most people who need a particular software app have it, it gets harder to sell them upgrades especially as the product matures, and the market for new purchases is never as big as the initial sales. I don't know that this justifies the model nearly every software company has adopted over the last decade, but I'm pretty sure that's the reason behind it.
What justifies differential pricing based on number of users? If you're buying wine for an evening, are you buying one bottle for you and your partner, or for a party of 50? You gots mo' people, you needs mo' wine. That's where the gap between tangibles and intangibles is negligible.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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My point is that it's a free market. Don't like the price? Don't buy it. Of course we can get into illegal cornering of markets and price fixing, etc. Did you design a system that wedded you to the evil prince? Fix it.