Files
Lumotia/docs/brief/lifetime-licence-economics.md
Claude 89c63891fa chore: rebrand from Kon/Corbie to Magnotia
Replace all instances of the legacy product names "Kon" and "Corbie" with
"Magnotia" across user-facing copy, code identifiers, package names, bundle
ids, file paths, and documentation. Preserves the unrelated "konsole" (KDE
terminal) reference and the parent CORBEL company name.

- Renames 10 Rust crates (kon-* → magnotia-*) and the tauri binary
- Updates package.json, tauri.conf.json (productName + identifier)
- Renames CSS classes (kon-rh-* → magnotia-rh-*) and animations
- Renames brand and roadmap docs
- Regenerates Cargo.lock and package-lock.json

Verified: svelte-check passes; pure-rust crates compile under new names.
2026-04-30 13:06:55 +00:00

1.3 KiB
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16. Lifetime Licence Economics

Proven models

  • Affinity (Serif): Perpetual licences (~£40/app, £135 suite) for 23 years. 53% profit margins. Acquired by Canva for ~£410M.
  • iA Writer: £40 Mac, £24 Windows, £16 iOS one-time. Free updates for 7+ years. Profitable with team of 12, entirely bootstrapped. Android experiment showed 50/50 split between one-time (£24) and subscription (£4/year), but purchases generated 23x more total revenue with significantly better retention.
  • Sublime Text: £79 perpetual licence with paid major-version upgrades. Sustained a tiny team for over a decade.
  • Obsidian: Free core + £3.20/month Sync, £6.40/month Publish. Clearest precedent for Magnotia's hybrid model.

Risks

  • Revenue plateaus once addressable market is saturated, while support costs continue indefinitely.
  • Wondershare Filmora attempted to retroactively limit lifetime holders — massive backlash, forced apology. Lesson: never revoke or downgrade promised features.
  • AppSumo lifetime deals carry 40% failure rate within 3 years (but this reflects underpriced SaaS with cloud costs, not local-first desktop apps).
  • 35% of apps now mix subscriptions with lifetime purchases (RevenueCat 2026 data).