> No reputable shop caring about long-term sustainability of their offering would pursue [selling one off permanent licenses]. But if one were to choose to go d

> No reputable shop caring about long-term sustainability of their offering would pursue [selling one off permanent licenses]. But if one were to choose to go down that road, they might market it by playing upon people’s nostalgia for shrink-wrap consumer software. They might emphasize how good it feels to “own” your software, while ignoring cost-of-ownership. They might rely on the inexperience of younger technical decision-makers, ones who have never had to confront the budget in real dollars that goes into long-term in-house support for services that aren’t the teams’ actual product. They might offer a “shared-source” style proprietary license, while being careful not to promise any updates or even bugfixes. Yup. Bingo. Not to mention, once the license is sold, there's no longer any formal incentive for the developer to make your copy of the product specifically better. There are informal incentives, like goodwill and it being bad for marketing, but putting things on hold exists in the world and you need to account for that.