Software is not a service

Software is not a service — it’s not even close to the dictionary definition of one. By any standard dictionary, software is personal property or goods. A service is the act of doing work for someone — a piece of work performed for a customer that does not involve manufacturing goods.

Think about real services: water, electricity, sewer, garbage collection, a locksmith, servicing your car. They all share one thing — someone has to keep doing the work. Stop doing the work, and the service stops. That’s why it’s paid for continuously: the labor never ends.

Software is the opposite. Once a vendor hands you a program, that program will run indefinitely — as long as you keep the same computer and operating system — even if the vendor never touches it again. No ongoing labor is required for the thing you already bought to keep working. That is the very definition of a good, not a service.

At best, software is a tool

At best, software is a tool — think of PCB design software, CAD, graphic design software, a word processor, or a photo editor. But imagine if a hammer were used to build your house, and the hammer company wanted to bill you monthly, indefinitely, for that hammer. Can anyone honestly call that tool a “service”? Of course not. A tool is something you own and use — not something you rent forever.

Yet software companies keep insisting their products are “services.” They are not. What they really want is to be treated like a utility — billing you month after month. But a utility must work every single day to deliver water or power; if it doesn’t, you get nothing. Software owes you no such daily labor, which is exactly why so much of today’s software is bloated, rented out, and locked behind endless subscriptions.

The honest position

Here’s the honest position: if a software vendor wants to earn more from the software they make, they should sell after-sales service, or charge for updates when they actually deliver those updates to market — real work, for real pay. That’s fair. Renting you back something you already own is not.