Subscriptionware

March 13, 2001 Subscriptionware: Software that is paid for on a term basis (subscription) rather than buying it outright. Subscriptionware is a new concept in the money-making side of software as well as the anti-piracy aspect of software. Ever since software was first developed there has been copy-protection code built into nearly every piece of software written. The goal is simple: Prevent people from stealing your product. Any software that sits on your computer can be hacked and the copy protection nullified. Given enough time, a cracker can defeat any security measures. Look at the CSS encryption used by DVD's; the Motion Picture Association of America spent millions of dollars developing this scheme to prevent people from copying their movies. CSS can be defeated using a mere 7 lines of Perl code written by a college undergrad. Contrast this with subscriptionware. The game Everquest is an online-only multiplayer game. In order to play, you must have an account on their system which you pay a monthly fee for. This account gets you one player that you can use as much as you want to. The system cannot be defeated because all the data is stored on the company servers, all the credit card payments are done from the company side, and all the gameplay must go through their servers. If anyone gets an account fraudulently then they can only play until the system admins find out and then all they have to do is cancel the account. Now transfer the idea of subscriptionware to the application market, Microsoft Word for example. Currently you buy Word (usually a part of Office) from a store, it comes on CD, and you can buy and sell that CD. You get a cute Certificate of Authenticity and the manuals and a product code and a nice warm feeling that you are not breaking the law. Even if you only use the program once a month, you still have to pay the full price. The CD can be easily copied and piracy is rampant. Subscriptionware can be applied to this product by making the software free, but with a per-use fee. The software could be freely installed, but it would not run unless you contact Microsoft and pay for limited use. I used to be against subscriptionware. Now I'm writing it. I am currently writing a system that puts the card files for small companies online. The system can support many businesses simultaneously and it would allow them to access their account from anywhere and at any time. The way to sell the product is not to sell the complete system to the customer and expect them to keep it running, it is to have them pay a monthly fee to use the system. The internet is what makes all this possible. What my product would offer is a world-wide database that has all their customer data (secure of course) available to them all the time. The reason subscriptionware works in this case is that they do not have to pay a system admin to keep the system working, they get free upgrades and security patches which they don't have to deal with, and they get the backup and security services of a large company. Subscriptionware isn't going to work in all situations, but in the cases where it makes sense to implement it it has a lot of potential. Travis Puderbaugh

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