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So a bar installs a TV intending to attract more barflies and the vendor charges per barfly/hour whether the barflies are watching it or not.
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Do they? I always thought that they charged a flat fee. But again this is not the same as using one software product to create another.
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So, if I buy a truck from General Motors for my freight carrying business, I should share my profits with GM?
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You probably do if you got the extended warranty. 
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No.
The extended warranty would be an optional cost of acquiring the vehicle.
Profits are what remain after all costs are deducted.
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A truck is not software. Stop trying to compare things that are not equivalent.
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But the concept is analogous. Just some people give special "clearance" to certain things like tech and the medical industry. And it makes sense that we devs would consider software special. IMO it shouldn't be that way though. One could think of software like a tool. And if I buy a screwdriver as a carpenter, should I share profits then?
Don't get me wrong, some profit-based models aren't always bad. For instance, some game engines are free to use until after the company makes money off the game. Which makes the barrier to entry low. If it's done ethically though and not from a place of greed.
But, this day in age, everyone is all about getting recurring payments from customers. Hell, they want you to get a "subscription" when going to the car wash now. The idea of just buying something is become a relic of the past... all for greed.
Jeremy Falcon
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If that is how they sell it yes.
Did you know you can get a 'fleet' credit card for your business?
Like a regular credit card but for commercial businesses which do in fact use vehicles as part of the business. The company gets benefits because the card is used, via the contract for the card, in certain ways. Such as where they buy gas and how the vehicle is serviced.
Same is true for large companies where the employees have company expenses. The company gets money back depending on things like how the employees travel, where they stay, where they eat and even office expenses.
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I think you make a good point.
Richard MacCutchan wrote: When you use someone's software product, in most cases it is to keep your business going.
However, if you compare this to a car, the analogy falls apart bec it would mean we would charge Uber drivers, delivery drivers, etc. more because they earn income using the product.
But, still you point is a good one.
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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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