Unraid has come out with their new pricing plan.
I have mistakenly said in some comments here before that they were doing away with their lifetime plan. They still have it, but it is just more expensive. They have introduced a couple of cheaper annual subscription plans.
If anyone is still on the fence about buying Unraid, you have a week until the new pricing plan comes into affect.
After seeing so many examples of companies really screwing up their pricing changes, it is refreshing to see Unraid do this so well.
If you ask me, Unraid went the Plex way, enshittification ensues.
There’s no enshitification happening if the product hasn’t gotten any worse. It’s just a pricing change. In fact, if the pricing change does in fact lead to a better product then this is the complete opposite of enshitification.
Fewer people will get into unraid. Natural churn will happen. The OS will slowly die, and as it dies usability will get worse.
Not many people are going to choose the subscription Linux over a free Linux.
I am personally not a huge fan of unraid, but their new licenses seems based.
One time purchases are not a sustainable income source for long living and updated software products like unraid.
Since they (for now) keeping the ‘legacy licenses’, offer security patches for some time after the license ends and do not restrict access to the system after the license ends means they do not fully follow others like Plex to the enshitification.