the.com/vendor lock in
the roach motel of software: easy to check in, brutal to leave.
means a situation where switching away from a product or provider costs so much in time, money, or data migration that you stay even if you hate it.
from predates software entirely, from mainframe era IBM contracts in the 1960s, but got its modern teeth with proprietary file formats and cloud APIs that made your own data hostage to one company's ecosystem.
classic tacticproprietary formats no competitor can read
cloud versionegress fees to download your own data
ironic twistfree tiers often cost the most later
escape costoften exceeds the original purchase price