Not Your Parent's Software

07 Sep 2024 - Ben

ONCE is a great example of software we can own, built for the modern world.

Years ago (when I was a kid), software mostly ran on the computer it was installed on. I just barely remember dial up, before computers had a persistent internet connection. Once they always had internet,the software on them started to shift. Your software could be on someone else’s computer and you could still use it. You could access your data on any device. You didn’t need to manage updates.

At first, this was great. It felt like your computer gained new superpowers, doing more with less. These services were different than the software that used run on our computers. They were typically “multi-tenant” with a very complicated setup, often running over multiple machines. You might not know it, but they took a dedicated system administration/operations team to run.

Services often represent an ongoing relationship with the expectation is that you continue to pay. This was great for the companies moving to this model, they found a more steady stream of revenue. The revenue was much larger than they could generate selling software only once.

And some of these computer “services” meet the services definition. For example, I get new music on Deezer whenever an artist drops a new album, a ongoing service. Email really does have a lot of complexity, when companies communicate between each other. But a lot of software doesn’t meet those requirements, so shouldn’t require that sort of ongoing relationship.

Defense of the service model includes ongoing maintenance costs, payment for new features, or many other arguments. But these arguments rarely hold water. A lot of the software doesn’t need significant ongoing maintenance (this is why software is so valuable). You didn’t agree to new features, nor do you have a choice about them. They are typically foisted upon you, sometimes to the point of being barely recognizable. Changes this significant could and should just be sold again. Companies hope that losing all the data you’ve collected in their software will be enough to keep you until you’re used to the new changes.

That’s where software like ONCE comes in. To bridge the gap between our parents’ software and our modern expectations. After purchasing, it’s your software with all the data freedoms our parents (unknowingly) enjoyed and all the access we expect from the modern day.

If this sounds too good to be true, there’s some technology under the hood to make it happen. First, it’s “single tenant”, running on a single machine just for you. It gets updates like the software on your computer (regularly, when you aren’t using, without downtime). It runs on your machine (although probably not your laptop). It’s very self-contained.

What all software works like this? ONCE has chat and book writing software. They’ve alluded to parking/permit managing software as well. I can think of password managers, podcast subscription apps, note taking apps, maybe even joining the Fediverse.

There are self hosted versions of all of these ideas already. What ONCE does better is focus on the User Experience of installing and maintaining. The install is one line. Maintenance happens automatically overnight. If a command line is intimidating, DHH demonstrated the whole process in an 8 minute video!

I hope to build software like this one day. And I hope I won’t be the only one!