The cloud is DRM. Its popularity is primarily due to the ability to conveniently attach a recurring revenue model and decisively prevent piracy. People expect

The cloud is DRM. Its popularity is primarily due to the ability to conveniently attach a recurring revenue model and decisively prevent piracy. People expect local software to be free or very cheap, but in reality complex software applications with good UI/UX are extremely expensive to produce. The UI/UX aspects are often far more costly and time consuming than the core of the software. Basically computers are intrinsically hard to use and it takes tremendous effort to pound them into a shape that non-computer-experts can deal with without pain. Lack of an economic model is why local software is nearly dead. Local is better in virtually every way except paying the developers. You get what you pay for. If you won't pay for local software but will rent software in the cloud, you will only get cloud software.