[xnorswap]

Because people expect:

  1. bug fixes and updates
  2. Services to work in the "cloud"

If you bought a piece of software, received precisely that version and never got updates, and didn't expect your data to magically follow you around, then we could have that model, as evidenced by that model working well back when software largely did work that way.

[JKCalhoun]

If I bought Adobe Photoshop I expect the OS to fix anything change they might have made that broke Photoshop. This is how it used to work. (Ho, ho, the Mac OS source base was well known to have workarounds to keep, for example, Microsoft products running.)

I can manage my own documents cloud.

Affinity got my money for years for not having a subscription strategy. (And for their apps being pretty badass.)