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<h1>phil@bajsicki:~$</h1>
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<h1 class="content-title">Considerations on FOSS and subscription models</h1><span class="content-meta"><p class="author">[Phil Bajsicki]</p><p class="date">2022-10-02</p><span>3 min read&nbsp;</span><a href="http://localhost:1313/tags/business">business</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost:1313/tags/foss">foss</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost:1313/tags/vendorlock">vendorlock</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost:1313/tags/proprietary">proprietary</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost:1313/tags/saas">saas</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost:1313/tags/scam">scam</a>&nbsp;</span></section>
<section><p>I&rsquo;ve had this idea for a few days. Mulled it over. Thought about it. And I end up considering options.</p>
<p>There are a ton of vendors for automation services. Zapier, Make, and others. Fundamentally what they do can be done as a one-time service.</p>
<p>Make the automation script. Feed it the API keys and details. Set it up on a server and run it.</p>
<p>That simple. What the automation vendors offer is the front-end website, which lets you put together that code yourself in a graphical user interface.</p>
<p>These carry a subscription charge - for every month you use their servers to run those scripts, you are charged for the privilege of running very basic (and simple) code on their servers.</p>
<p>AND they don&rsquo;t actually offer any support. If you want help with setting up an automation, whether it&rsquo;s because you don&rsquo;t understand something or because it broke (for whatever reason), you can&rsquo;t count on them to come in and help.</p>
<p>With automation vendors like that, you&rsquo;re entirely on your own to figure out what&rsquo;s broken, and how to fix it.</p>
<p>So what if you had your own server? What if you had the scripts that do all the things, yourself? Not hidden behind a paywall, not obscured by fancy pictures and colors. Just there. Working. And in the off-chance something breaks&hellip; you have a team on call, and it&rsquo;s reliably fixed within hours.</p>
<p>The funny thing is, you can. A basic VPS is about $20-30 a year. Hiring a coder who can create automations in an hour or two is about $100. Then you can easily find maintenance for it at $15-20/h, depending on the specifics.</p>
<p>Then instead of paying for a subscription&hellip; you can have the automations under your control. Your data. Your server. No dependence on a third party who may or may not be using your data for their own ends. No hang-ups or crashes that you can&rsquo;t respond to. No downtime because of vendor errors.</p>
<p>Best part: you can then sell that same automation to your clients, or add it as a bonus. It&rsquo;s already there. It&rsquo;s working! There is absolutely no reason you can&rsquo;t make it part of your product line.</p>
<p>There is a real market for this, and if it can be asked, this kind of offer can easily become the foundation for a managed automations business.</p>
<p>The idea being that you develop, install, and maintain automations for clients - not through a front-end, but by actually having a human look and write the code to meet whatever needs there are.</p>
<p>But the TL;DR is:</p>
<ul>
<li>Subscription services are a scam. The benefit of &rsquo;ease&rsquo; and &lsquo;convenience&rsquo; is entirely offset by platform limitations and lack of real support.</li>
<li>Hosting your own software to do these things is much easier than it may seem.</li>
<li>Having control over your IT and business processes is a sure way to ensure that you&rsquo;re not getting undercut by vendor issues.</li>
<li><a href="https://my.fsf.org/join">Join the FSF.</a></li>
<li>Use <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">Emacs</a>.</li>
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