If the software is worth it, absolutely - I would pay $500 and use it for years to come. Up until a couple of years ago, that was the model used by Adobe for th

If the software is worth it, absolutely - I would pay $500 and use it for years to come. Up until a couple of years ago, that was the model used by Adobe for their Creative Suite. Tools like Vegas Pro are in the same boat - it's expensive for a one-time fee, but I view it as an investment in my craft (if I really need the tool). My hypothesis (and I have no data to back this up) is that most users leverage the same functionality over and over despite the updates and new features. As a hobbyist user of photo-editing software (and Photoshop in the past), I can't recall a single update to the stack in the past five years that was groundbreaking in my day-to-day usage of the tool. That's not to say this won't be the case in the future, but when it is, I will happily pay a premium for the next version. There is, of course, the argument that subscriptions lower the bar of entry - a student can't afford $600 per tool, but they can much easier bear the $29.99/mo. My argument is less about "no subscriptions, ever" but more about "give me an option to give you money upfront and forget about updates until 5 years later."