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I would prefer a name that strongly implies ownership.

Such that by definition it becomes painfully obvious that you don't really own the other stuff when confronted with it.

In the UK freehold versus leasehold do evoke these terms, but only if you've entered the housing market to learn about it by getting bitten first. So not really an instantly recognisable term otherwise.

Then again, perhaps the focus here should be to also start calling all that other software "leasehold" software. I think that would then send the right message and establish "freehold software" as a useful term.

The term leasehold fits well come to think of it. You still "buy" your flat, but there's a lease stipulating conditions and an expiry date (typically decades at least), meaning there are many restrictions to full enjoyment of your purchased property, which also affect your ability / profitability to sell, and at some point you (or your children) might even stop having what you thought were ownership rights.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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....

This is one of the reasons I chose Perl as the "foundation language" for my project, Pollyanna Framework. It's an off-Internet capable Web-based discussion system that can run using regular Web hosting, but can also be run locally on a local hotspot (e.g. together with Internet in a Box.)

Thank you for posting this essay.

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.

That’s partially why I’m interested in self hosting

I do think tastefully done telemetry with clear and easily accessible opt out is fine though. Nothing wrong with developers wanting to understand how their software is used in practice imo

I grew up in Freehold, NJ. Would this make any Freehold software I write Freehold2x?

So it’s “free” as in “hold my beer”?