> Seems like a fairly trivial business expense to me.
Consider a freelancer, relatively new to their chosen profession with a sawtooth cashflow. A one time purchase means they can continue to do their job for as long as the app they bought works on the OS they work on. A subscription service means a bad couple of months and an unexpected bill locks them out of opening any of their old work and limits their ability to do / get new work. Your argument boils down to "well I can afford it, so everyone should be able to"
Subscriptions absolutely benefit cash strapped freelancers. Rather than having to outright pay several hundreds or a thousand dollars up front on software, they can get by for 10s of dollars a month. As long as they are getting any sort of work, they can easily offset the cost of the software.
But nobody is forcing you to use Adobe products. Buy the Affinity tools or use GIMP if you like.
Consider the same freelancer, new to their profession with limited start up capital unable to purchase the adobe suite he trained on in college so he has a choice, try and learn a whole new tool and hope there's a FOSS or cheaper equivalent or pirate the software and buy a licence when the money rolls in.
how much was adobe to buy outright? CS6 master collection was what, $7,000
I for one could never upfront that, but $70 a month for 100 months, including all updates in that time and new products as they release? sure, im game.
Consider a freelancer, relatively new to their chosen profession with a sawtooth cashflow. A one time purchase means they can continue to do their job for as long as the app they bought works on the OS they work on. A subscription service means a bad couple of months and an unexpected bill locks them out of opening any of their old work and limits their ability to do / get new work. Your argument boils down to "well I can afford it, so everyone should be able to"