It seems like every time someone brings up SaaS offerings, people immediately begin dunking on the idea.
Fundamentally, is the business model really so bad though? On one hand, I understand that many of these businesses tend to resort to predatory practices like vendor lock-in, price hikes, manipulate sales tactics, and more. On the other hand, it's not like businesses can't maintain their software for free forever, regularly rolling out security patches, bug fixes, and new features.
I honestly believe that we've been spoiled by the huge plethora of FOSS offerings that you never have to pay a single cent for. For example, too many people threw a tantrum when Red Hat decided to stop supporting stable releases of CentOS, but what duty do they really have to support an enterprise grade Linux distro for free forever? Even if you pay $2 for a mobile app, people will expect the developer to support it forever at no extra cost. Maintaining software isn't free, not even cheap. I believe SaaS could be a fine business model for software that requires constant maintenance and support, at least when done with trust and care. I think it's the predatory practices that many of these businesses engage in that has shattered trust in the SaaS model.
Other models simply don't work for most people. Very few independent open source developers are able to live off of donations alone. Most mobile developers aren't surviving off the sales of their mobile app. It's simply not sustainable.
I'm curious to see what you all think.
If you're talking about people here, don't take it so seriously. SaaS makes the most sense for most software businesses. I will say, though, that some software is SaaS even though it's not necessary. An example I personally dislike is workout tracking apps for iOS and Android. Personally in that case it makes more sense to charge for the app and then additionally for extra workouts, than monthly IMO.