the biggest reason for subscriptions is. 1. consumer laws don't protect it. and 2. you can quit your job and don't have to be actually productive and work for a living because your users will just keep on "buying" the product every month indefinitely. and finally 3. subscription basically gives you monopoly in any given area you host it; because the user will usually not look or even have the means to look for options or alternatives once they have already tied a percentage of their monthly income to a company for the software or service they provide - as wallets got spread thinner and thinner until they, now, are entirely swallowed by subscriptions.
the only people arguing in favor of subscriptions are those who don't want to work for a living while still taking advantage of the capitalist system.
Found this out when I wanted a decent journaling app for Android. All the most popular ones have subscription tiers that amount to hundreds of dollar over just a few years.... for a fucking journal app? what the hell!
only way i'll be happy with that is if no one owns anything. corporations, people, billionaires. Otherwise might as well burn it all down, why should care if i dont own anything.
I’m not sure what the logical outcome of this escalating arms race of enshittification will be, but as a career Sysadmin I’ve been able to avoid a LOT of this bullshit through self hosting, which is something a (Non-tech nerd) layman isn’t going to bother with, for as long as existing products (and their subscriptions) are still within “tolerable” levels.
But the thing is, a lot of the convenience with computing devices today didn’t exist in the 90’s, when it was more common for young normies to have what would be considered above average computer technical skills today.
When the entire market turns into inescapable subscriptions, the market for a non-technical friendly appliance box, like Synology came close to doing, shows up to corner the market on hardware you can own and run your own shit on with minimal headaches and no subscriptions.
Currently I have hbo max free with my phone plan, plex on nas and my local library. I also have YouTube music family plan, but I started putting songs on nas recently, maybe I’ll replace that too.