I find my tolerance for subscription software is proportional to how often I use it. A tool I use daily as my core work, no problem - I want to support them to ensure they stick around. But occasional tools I’d prefer to buy upgrades only if there are new feature I care about.
I’m not a creative, so I’m not paying Adobe subscription (they’re icky in so many ways). But if I were I’d have no issue.
But there is a 3rd category - something like an editor I couldn’t bear if it was tied to a company to ensure it’s survival so that’s got to be open source - even though ironically I’m willing to pay more in that scenario.
I'd say there is a fourth category too - things that would be perfectly fine as a simple, local program purchased once that grow over-complicated cloud features to justify a subscription model.
Examples of this would be Lens, Postman and now Insomnia. This sort of behaviour is why I use k9s and Bruno instead.
100% agree with this. And I’d put most of the software into this category.
Also, let me offer you a different view on the software you use a lot and therefore want to support. The more a software/service is important to you, the more you should worry about having that as subscription, because it can go away in a matters of hours without you being able to do anything about that.
Think if slack went bankruptcy. Or if it was acquired by someone that shut it down. What would all those people that heavy relies on slack for their workflows? Or what about GitHub?
I’m not a creative, so I’m not paying Adobe subscription (they’re icky in so many ways). But if I were I’d have no issue.
But there is a 3rd category - something like an editor I couldn’t bear if it was tied to a company to ensure it’s survival so that’s got to be open source - even though ironically I’m willing to pay more in that scenario.