Speaking as a 1Password customer and Firefox user ...
Just because you pay for something, it doesn't make the business model sustainable. 1Password may be a solid product, but it's in essence a key-value store, which means that there isn't much AgileBits can do to improve it in order to get people to upgrade to a version 7. Heck mobile users would get that for free anyway. And btw, you're probably on macOS, because there is no Linux version, the stable Windows client sucks (version 4) and their new beta client (version 6) is read-only for usage without an account.
In other words they have a potential problem: their market is not that big and the standalone version requires convincing people to upgrade for sustainability. And this puts their new subscription model in a new perspective. Which is cool and all, except that would you really pay $3 / month on a yearly contract ($3.6 actually with VAT included) for a password manager? I wouldn't. You can bring up the coffee comparisons of course, but I have other more important subscriptions to pay for that have priority (e.g. phone, email, storage, hosting, domains, etc).
As for the endorsement of tptacek, if you care about the words of an HN user, he has endorsed only the standalone product, not the online enabled version to which they are now transitioning. Which no sane expert would endorse actually, given the problem of needing to enter your password in a web interface for account management.
Now don't get me wrong, I think 1Password is a good product, but then you compared it with Firefox and Firefox is open source with its development being done in the open, with contributions by third parties as well, which means that no matter what, it will stick around for as long as people want it. Firefox is also one of our champions for open standards, being essentially an open platform for app development. Now this puts it in another league entirely.
Just because you pay for something, it doesn't make the business model sustainable. 1Password may be a solid product, but it's in essence a key-value store, which means that there isn't much AgileBits can do to improve it in order to get people to upgrade to a version 7. Heck mobile users would get that for free anyway. And btw, you're probably on macOS, because there is no Linux version, the stable Windows client sucks (version 4) and their new beta client (version 6) is read-only for usage without an account.
In other words they have a potential problem: their market is not that big and the standalone version requires convincing people to upgrade for sustainability. And this puts their new subscription model in a new perspective. Which is cool and all, except that would you really pay $3 / month on a yearly contract ($3.6 actually with VAT included) for a password manager? I wouldn't. You can bring up the coffee comparisons of course, but I have other more important subscriptions to pay for that have priority (e.g. phone, email, storage, hosting, domains, etc).
As for the endorsement of tptacek, if you care about the words of an HN user, he has endorsed only the standalone product, not the online enabled version to which they are now transitioning. Which no sane expert would endorse actually, given the problem of needing to enter your password in a web interface for account management.
Now don't get me wrong, I think 1Password is a good product, but then you compared it with Firefox and Firefox is open source with its development being done in the open, with contributions by third parties as well, which means that no matter what, it will stick around for as long as people want it. Firefox is also one of our champions for open standards, being essentially an open platform for app development. Now this puts it in another league entirely.