Why is Liberation a subscription?
A message from Seb Lee-Delisle - independent developer and creator of Liberation
It’s a question I get asked quite often, and I just realised that I never fully explained why. It's a difficult question to answer succinctly because there are so many different strands that have fed into my decision.
One of the main reasons is that my goal isn’t just to build great laser software, but to move the laser industry towards a more open future. Opening up that industry will take time, so the subscription model makes it possible to sustain that effort over the long term.
That's the short version. For the long version, read on!
Before we get into it, I want to say that I completely understand that some people just don’t like subscriptions. It's no wonder when we’ve watched companies like Adobe and Microsoft use them to maximise profit at the cost of trust and goodwill. They lock people out of their own work, make it difficult to cancel and keep nudging prices upwards.
To me, though, that’s not a failure of the business model; that’s a failure of ethics. It doesn’t matter how good the software is if the company behind it can't be trusted to put its customers’ needs first.
That's why my reputation is really important to me; I want to be known just as much for my integrity and fairness as for the quality of my software.
The back story
When I started Liberation, my original plan was to make it open source and hope that users would donate money to support it.
I love open source, but the laser industry has a tiny user base, so the numbers would never work.1 For Liberation to grow and be a professional tool, I would need to find a better way to finance it.
So I set up a Patreon - it grew quickly and provided a small income. I’m hugely grateful to those early supporters who became the foundation of the Liberation community - without them this software wouldn’t exist! Today, Liberation has grown into a small team, but it’s still that same community support that makes ongoing development possible.
Designing a different kind of subscription
At this point, I could have sold perpetual licences; it would have brought in a useful burst of income, but once those early sales dried up and the money ran out, development would stop and those customers would be left high and dry.
So I looked around at what subscription systems existed, but they all seemed clunky and annoying.2 I realised that if I wanted to have a system that was easy to use, fair, and reliable, I would have to build my own. So I spent months building one from scratch myself - one that matched my values, prioritised user experience, reliability and ethics:
I never want you to lose access to your work because you stop paying.
If your subscription ends, the app continues to work - you can still load and save projects, edit shows, use the built-in visualiser, practise busking and keep creating. The only thing you lose is laser output,3 every other feature remains available.
I never want you to keep paying for software you're not using.
If you spend six months building a show and only need to output for one weekend, that’s fine. Design, rehearse and refine it without paying anything. Subscribe for the month you need to output, then pause again afterwards.
Everyone pays the same price for the same service.
I want the pricing to be completely transparent. You’re paying for laser output, nothing else. The more lasers, the higher the licence tier. No special offers or Black Friday deals where new customers get a better deal than loyal ones.
Generous grace period for licence renewal / payment failure.
Any event software is high-stakes and I've been on enough big shows to know the intensity of these environments. If you haven't had the chance to update your certificate or there's been a payment failure, Liberation will keep working for a full week.4
Cancelling or pausing is easy and fast.
Cancelling or pausing your subscription is just a couple of clicks - I designed it to be easy! No pestering emails, no questions, no pressure - it's your right. And no fake special offers or "retention" systems.
Breaking the lockdown
Most professional lasers can only be controlled by one company’s software. This makes launching new laser software especially challenging - people need to be convinced that it's worth changing their laser controller to use it. Other software has tried to break into the market and failed; a stark demonstration of how hard it can be to sustain ongoing software development in a niche market with a locked-down ecosystem.
(Imagine if DMX required a £500 proprietary interface for every lighting fixture - that would be ludicrous! But that’s exactly the situation the laser industry has lived with for over a decade.)
Thankfully there’s a growing selection of open controllers5, and my goal is to support as many of them as I can. This takes a lot of work, so I’m sharing this work with anyone else who wants to make laser software; the core laser control code in Liberation is open source.6
The easier it is for people to build new laser software, the healthier and more innovative the industry becomes. I’d love to see a wide variety of software, each with its own ideas and strengths.
If Liberation is a success, then we'll see wider adoption of open controllers, and each one brings us one step closer to a healthier, more open and innovative industry. With Liberation, you don't just get great software; you're also supporting real change for the better.
That change is already under way - we are moving towards an industry where people choose the best hardware, the best software, and are free to mix and match whichever combination suits them best.
What does that have to do with subscriptions?
Good question! I guess what I’m trying to say is that opening up an entire industry takes time, and a subscription model is a sustainable way to fund the work. It's most definitely a marathon, not a sprint!
In many ways, I still see the Liberation subscription as a continuation of the Patreon campaign: an indie project that exists because of a community of people who choose to support its development. And who believe in a more open laser industry. At the same time, it keeps us accountable to existing users; our success depends on continuing to earn their support, so we stay focused on reliability, usability and the features people actually ask for.
Besides, I don’t think a perpetual licence feels quite as safe as it once did. Nowadays operating systems update so frequently that you need to maintain your code just to keep it working. Drivers stop working after system updates, companies get bought out, key developers move on and code bases age out.
There are many7 laser apps that people bought in perpetuity but are now essentially unusable; it's not a guarantee of long-term support. Ultimately you’re trusting that the company has both the incentive and the resources to keep investing in the product for years to come.
I suppose what I’m really saying is this: I’d rather have a subscription from a company I trust than a perpetual licence from one I don’t.
To summarise...
In short, I chose this model because it gives Liberation the best chance of long-term success, supports my open-source work8, keeps us focused on current customers, lets us release new features immediately, and avoids shady pricing or upgrade-cycle games.9
And I have worked hard to make sure that it's fair and ethical: you can still access, edit and practise your shows without an active licence; you can pause, cancel, upgrade or downgrade easily10; there are no "retention" offers, dark patterns, pestering or guilt-tripping; and longer-term prepaid licences are available for permanent installations or touring productions.
Final thoughts
I don’t expect everyone to agree with the choices I’ve made, but I hope you can see that I have given this a great deal of thought and consideration.
Every part of Liberation, from the licensing model to the hardware support, comes from the same philosophy: make high-quality creative tools people can depend on, keep the licence fair, avoid hardware lock-in, and help leave the laser industry in a better state than we found it.
I don’t know whether Liberation will become the leading laser show software. But I hope that, years from now, the industry will be built around open standards, with a wide variety of wonderful software to choose from, where people are free to pick whichever tools suit them best. And if Liberation plays even a small part in making that happen, I’ll consider it a huge success.
I’d love to hear what you think. Join the discussion on the Liberation forum.