You do not own your software anymore. You rent it. Every month, you pay. You cannot leave. Companies know this. They control the content you create. They control your data. They control your access. If you stop paying, everything stops working.
How we lost ownership
Twenty years ago, companies sold software. You paid once. You owned a license. The software ran on your computer. You controlled it.
Then software as a service arrived. Companies stopped selling licenses. They started renting access. They called this progress. And at first it really felt like that. You paid a smaller initial price. Got faster updates and the product teams could deliver faster.
This was short-lived. When payments became predictable, investment in product diminished. As customers became hostages the goal shifted from improving product to drive sales. Companies made massive profits. Investors loved it.
Almost all software companies copied this model. Software moved to the cloud. More companies forced rental. Less software could be owned. This is techno-feudalism.
Techno-feudalism
Yanis Varoufakis coined the term techno-feudalism. He is a Greek academic and politician. He studied how big tech companies changed the economy.
Varoufakis made four arguments:
Capitalism ended. The 2008 financial crisis broke the system. Governments bailed out failing companies. They did not let the system fail and rebuild. They propped up a broken model.
Tech companies became feudal lords. Big tech companies control digital platforms. These platforms work like real estate. The companies own the land. You work on their land.
They extract value from users. Tech companies saw potential in data. Not only for utilization, but also as a means to keep users tied to their platform. Users create the value. Companies store it and rent you access.
Rent-seeking replaced competition. The system does not reward competition anymore. It rewards access and control. If you control the platform, you control the income. You do not need to compete. You just need to own the gate.
The problems this creates
You cannot leave
When you rent software, you cannot leave easily. Your content lives in their system. Your workflows depend on their tools. Your team learned their interface. Switching costs too much time and money.
Companies know this. They raise prices. They remove features like export or hide under ever increasing plans like enterprise. They change terms. You have no choice. You keep paying.
You lose control
The company controls everything. They decide when to update. They decide what features exist. They decide who can access your data. They can change rules without asking you.
If their servers fail, your work stops. If they have an outage, you wait. If they change their API, your integrations break. You have no control.
We want this to change
We want you to own your tools. You pay once. You own the license. The software runs on your computer. You control it.
This is not new. This is how software worked before rent-seeking took over. We believe that the era where all programs lived in your browser is past. The next era of software will be on device, running with local AI & LLMs.
Every company faces a choice now. Do you rent forever? Or do you own your tools?
Renting feels easier at first. Someone else handles the "hard part". Someone else manages updates. Someone else takes responsibility.
But renting has hidden costs. You lose control. You lose flexibility. You lose ownership. Over time, these costs compound.
Ownership used to be bundled with responsibility and long development. But not anymore.
Own your content.
Own your workflow.
Own your future.