You guys are funny. Microsoft, Adobe and many others have moved to a subscription model. I wonder why...
Because they make more money that way. Doesn't mean it's good for everyone else.
Steady paychecks are good for software engineers and their families. Behind the facade of the evil, corporate empire are people, just like you and me.
I have to agree with you on this one ...
BUT ... companies will always attempt to maximise profits from any give product - even if it is at the expense of user freedom.
A healthy company typically is good for a product - especially when there is competition. In this regard, the improvements to the Altium offerings I think have been largely due to the fact that Eagle was actually acquired by AutoDesk. I have no doubt that when that happened, it was a huge kick in the bum for Altium, and that I think is actually a GoodThing (Tm).
A company should be entitled to make a profit from it's product - even more so if it's good and they are continuing to develop and improve it.
It the "how they go about it" part that usually leaves quite a few of us uncomfortable .... either on a basis of principle, or due to *what* we do, *how* we do it, or *where* we do it.
... and often ... we don't get to choose those ....
So, how vendors change their method of subscription can have a big impact on whether we can/can't use a specific tool based on the handcuffs that they put on us in their attempts to extract the most amount of money from a product. If they choose to change the rules, under which we work, and make it infeasible, then it is not just the outright cost of changing the tool, but it is also the time it takes to come up to speed with a new one. People think of outright cost, but rarely do they think of the "time" factor involved to become familiar with a new tool - let alone any automation that they may have already added in order to become "efficient" with a tool.
So ... CAD tools are really like "religion" ... and when the vendors force us to change, because they want to extract the last dollar from them with their new pricing/operating model, it's at this point that the users are more than entitled to get a little bit bitchy.
/BGM