Corps figured out sustained income was better than marketing and making products. All they had to do was take away every digital product and turn it into a subscription.
Then they'll buy each other up until they are an effective monopoly and raise prices forever.
I don't see a way out of this for products already captured if you need them.
Problem is, they should realise this only creates a gap for a competitor or even worse (from the companies' perspective) a viable open source project that they'll never be able to compete on price with.
Oh, I thought maybe it was from that creepy Jehovah's Witness propaganda show, although comparing the mother directly, the meme image is clearly of higher quality.
Maybe a bit controversial but I am fine with business products being subscription based as their income depend on it and they get priority support quite often. I work with SAP products so that's what I am basing it on. Kinda same feeling for something like adobe commercial licences but the problem is with the extremely high cost, hidden fees and other shenanigans. The only subscription that I have is Tuta and Addy which I find reasonable. I would probably be getting a subscription for music and videos as well if any of them were actually good, reasonably priced and somewhat ethical for business standards.
For Microsoft I fully understand that they’d rather have a subscription model for Windows. After all you’re getting updates every fortnight and critical patches ASAP. I wonder they let you buy their shit for so long.
Just in case someone brings it up—and someone will bring it up regardless—: I’m not defending their recent enshittification and “always online” mindset.