Developers want the $$$ too... so they too follow whatever generates revenue. It's more like the psychology of incentives got screwed: we've taught people to pr

Developers want the $$$ too... so they too follow whatever generates revenue. It's more like the psychology of incentives got screwed: we've taught people to prefer subscriptions instead of one-time-payments, and you're psychologically biased to pay a more expensive subscription for something you spend a lot of time using. You're not going to pay $50/month for a tool you use 3 times a week for 10 minutes no matter how useful it is. Othoh, if the price was "license + 1 year free upgrades" you'd be quite likely to cough up a $600 license, because you'll think more in terms of outcome value and not time spent. But though luck, the company selling the subscription thingie would be valued more. So you're not going to do that. Once you do this, you'll not want to waste too much of your user's time, as they'll choose a more efficient competitor... but you're not going to want to take too little of the user's time or attention either! Now he's subconsciously biased into thinking in terms of price/time-unit and you need to play this game.