Software sold as a one-off sale can be, and usually is, very profitable. See e.g., most software companies pre-SaaS-era. This is in fact how most software was s

Software sold as a one-off sale can be, and usually is, very profitable. See e.g., most software companies pre-SaaS-era. This is in fact how most software was sold...and is still sold today. SaaS is the plague on software development, because the subscription model demands a shift to constant feature "upgrades" and other frequently-useless "updates" intended to justify the perpetual subscription costs to customers.