And if the software makes this impractical, decide which is worth more, the immediate benefit, or the future. Export data to a neutral format and neutral storage medium regularly, so that you have access to it in the future. Don't keep your data on their platform only. And be wary of to what extend you allow yourself to be locked into any one app or platform. Buy a piece of software because it provides value given the current state of things. And in the end we all have to do so with a lot of software that we use, because no one single person is able to maintain all of the software that they rely on, from the OS to the apps and across devices – it's just way too much code and way too much of everything.Īnd this brings me to the point which is to say, factor this into the consideration when making decisions. Or, we can use the software that others make and admit to ourselves that we are not in control of the future of that software nor how we will be able to use it. But that has a huge cost too, which is the amount of your time that you put into it. any number of reasons.Ībout the only thing that you can really do in the end, if you want ultimate control, is to develop the software yourself. Sometimes it's the company behind a proprietary piece of software that goes bankrupt, or the company is acquired and the developers put to work on something else. Sometimes it's an open source developer that stops maintaining the software and noone has the time nor capacity to pick up the work. Whether you pay with your money or your time, almost all software has an end of life at some point. And software that lives forever is the exception not the rule in either case. I run proprietary and open source software side by side. I write open source software because I think open source is both important, and because it is beneficial both to myself and others. If you want freedom to use software the way you prefer, use open source software. I use a lot of proprietary software too, but I don't see any point or reason to demand that I should be able to use the proprietary software the way that I want. Looks like a lot of trouble just to use software you payed for, the way you prefer.

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