I feel that the “support / updates” subscription model allows a constant stream of income for devs while still allowing one to “own” a given version. There are

I feel that the “support / updates” subscription model allows a constant stream of income for devs while still allowing one to “own” a given version. There are things like Bitwig (DAW) that sell the initial product for $300ish and that comes with 12 months of updates and priority support. You get to “keep” the latest version that falls within that update window (and IIRC that means major versions, so you get any future point releases / security updates). If you want to renew, it’s something around $120-160 for another 12 months of updates. This seems more or less fair to me; active users who continue to benefit from updates contribute to development, and people who just need it for a while plus occasional users not getting that much value out of it get to use that again in the future if they need, without “losing” anything unlike with traditional subscriptions.