Any concrete examples of liability being brought up against a developer?
The theory is one thing, the reality is another. Continuous updates are universally treated by developers as a carte blanche for any changes, including drastic reworking of the UI, refactoring established features and generally messing up user experience. So the resistance to this model is very real and well justified for that reason alone, without considering the subscription aspect of it.
* Besides, if a developer screwed up so badly that a patch is required, it's only fair and reasonable for that patch to be provided pro bono.
>if a developer screwed up so badly that a patch is required
Required patching isn't necessarily due to a "developer screw[ed] up" - it's as likely to be that an upstream package has a discovered vulnerability, or something like the Intel fiasco from a few years ago, etc
Don't assign to illwill or incompetence what's more likely to be accidental, or ignorance
Irrespective of the root cause, all critical issues are still ultimately on the developer and it's the developer who should absorb the costs. If they can't afford that or can't do it in a way that's not disruptive to the normal use of the software, then it's still their problem, not users.
but nice try (and thanks for admitting you don't understand the problem, and instead want to unilaterally blame someone else for something which likely wasn't their problem)
The theory is one thing, the reality is another. Continuous updates are universally treated by developers as a carte blanche for any changes, including drastic reworking of the UI, refactoring established features and generally messing up user experience. So the resistance to this model is very real and well justified for that reason alone, without considering the subscription aspect of it.
* Besides, if a developer screwed up so badly that a patch is required, it's only fair and reasonable for that patch to be provided pro bono.