>It worked all the way through the 80s, 90s, and most of the 00s. It brought Adobe, Ableton and many others to their dominant market positions, [...] What’s changed?
To clarify the conversation, "local-first" vs "cloud-based" is inadvertently getting muddied up with revenue models such as single-payment vs ongoing subscriptions. Those are 2 separate concepts.
Adobe/Ableton/Quicken desktop software still run locally on the users computer. Adobe Photoshop can save ".psd" files locally on the computer. But they have ongoing subscription fees and if users don't keep up the payments, they lose functionality or stop working.
Instead, what people often mean by local-first is "local _data_ stored on my computer as a 1st-class concept". The Single-Source-Of-Truth of data is preferably on my home computer and the cloud is just a convenient replica for backup or sharing. Ideally, the local-first data is also a an open format instead of a proprietary opaque blob. Examples would be local-first Obsidian (markdown files stored locally on computer) -- vs -- Notion (notes stored in the cloud). Or local-first NextCloud instead of cloud-based DropBox.
As your examples showed, local-first software can be monetized via subscriptions.
OTOH, if I need a network connection to verify my subscription status for the software to work in the first place it eliminates one of the main benefits.
To clarify the conversation, "local-first" vs "cloud-based" is inadvertently getting muddied up with revenue models such as single-payment vs ongoing subscriptions. Those are 2 separate concepts.
Adobe/Ableton/Quicken desktop software still run locally on the users computer. Adobe Photoshop can save ".psd" files locally on the computer. But they have ongoing subscription fees and if users don't keep up the payments, they lose functionality or stop working.
Instead, what people often mean by local-first is "local _data_ stored on my computer as a 1st-class concept". The Single-Source-Of-Truth of data is preferably on my home computer and the cloud is just a convenient replica for backup or sharing. Ideally, the local-first data is also a an open format instead of a proprietary opaque blob. Examples would be local-first Obsidian (markdown files stored locally on computer) -- vs -- Notion (notes stored in the cloud). Or local-first NextCloud instead of cloud-based DropBox.
As your examples showed, local-first software can be monetized via subscriptions.