Very much so. I am perfectly willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a perpetual license. I run many machines and can refer back to a project years later. Not so with a subscription, generally.<p>I do like the new model where you pay for a perpetual license and have the option to subscribe to annual updates. That's a win-win. I do want developers to make a good living. I also want to be able to access my files from 1997 if I choose.
Yes. I have had one time payment software licenses before with hundreds of apps.<p>Instead, most of them have replaced that with a subscription rent-seeking grift by overcharging each month and just offering the basics of functionality and unnecessarily creating an account for that purpose.<p>Want to cancel? You lose access to the software you once 'paid for'. A certain entity once said and still foresights a dystopian future:<p>It's 2030, you own nothing, there is no privacy, can't use the digital software / game(s) offline, always connected online for license checks 24/7 if you paid for it and life has never been better!
I prefer the subscription model, as long as the total expected cost is not too far out of line for the service. $5/mo for every tiny utility is too much.<p>However, before the rise of subscriptions developers still needed income. What often happened were releases with big changes (sometimes completely changing the ui) for the sake of justifying an upgrade cost. Even worse, incompatibility between versions to force an upgrade.<p>Perpetual license of an older version included with the subscription does seem like a good middle ground here.
Nope. I stopped buying software when this started. I find an open source or free alternative now. Partly because having a bill for software that I may or may not use every month is unnecessary but I'm hearing now that you have to threaten to sue to get Adobe to cancel a subscription.
Yeah. Used to be, you could just wait until you could actually afford to upgrade. If times were rough you just wait a bit longer before getting the latest version. Same problem with the cloud. It's good when times are good but if you can't afford to pay the bill, your fleet evaporates and you're SOL.
I miss it because I recently used an add-on mod for a pc game (that’s very good) that also has a subscription model. I rack up huge bills just subscribing left and right to every little thing.
I certainly would miss them, if I were stuck dealing with the endlessly irritating nickel-and-diming subscription model, but I have almost entirely migrated onto open-source software instead.
I know lots of people hate on them, but honestly I usually don't mind too much. It does change the mental model for pricing: instead of being based on dev costs, it's based on value. If I use the software for a long time, then it's presumably more valuable, and therefore it makes sense for it to cost more overall (if you assume a value-based pricing model).
I like monthly pay for something I would only use for a single project.<p>For something I use frequently, pay for updates for 1 year <i>and keep</i> if I cancel. This way encourages the software to be worked on, and demotivates features being artificially held back until the next major version (to encourage upgrades).
Yes, and I always choose products that still offer them if possible. If there's a lifetime license available, that's always the one I'll get.