Subscription models are inherently more of a problem though. If you have old standalone software, you can still run it on an old machine or VM if you need to update an old design. If you've stopped subscribing ( e.g. moved to a different solution) and re-sub cost is too much ( e.g. they only offer annual subs) or the maker decides to drop it, you're 100% hosed unless you can hack it.
For products that are expected to have a long lifetime, any subscription package is a very risky choice.
Exactly. The BIG risk with subscription is the
Mafia/Hostage-ware relationship that can too easily develop.
Corporate Bean counters decide they need to 'boost takeup' so they have an expiring license - no pay, no run.
They also want to turf-protect their other products, so they use binary/encrypted data bases.
Mentor are (currently?) following this model on their Digikey version of crippled-PADS, and it is getting serious push-back from users.
So much, that it seems Digikey has multiple EDA offerings now.
Proper version control also dictates
non-expiring licenses, but again that is in direct conflict with the maximise cash flow edicts.
Some play tricks to lock-your-data, so you can only modify designs, not create new ones.
Alas, if
their code decides
you have crossed some invisible boundary, you are hosed.
This is why
ASCII open-databases like KiCad (and a few others) is really the only way to accept any modern EDA design.