Lots of business users actually prefer monthly subscription over a fixed license. This lets them move the costs from capital costs (CAPEX) to operational costs

Lots of business users actually prefer monthly subscription over a fixed license. This lets them move the costs from capital costs (CAPEX) to operational costs (OPEX) which finance departments like more. It's not just something software vendors push, it's what many of their clients actually want. Now, as a private user the situation may or may not be completely different. But prefering a monthly license over a fixex license is not a dark pattern as such. ARR (annually recurring revenue) or - yeah, monthly licensing - is also something the stock market incentivizes. Generally stocks have gone up considerably for companies that have moved to subscription based revenue models. For publicly listed companies this is a fairly strong signal as well.