I’ve been thinking about writing something on this topic for a while. Sometimes I genuinely feel like we’re rapidly leaving behind those days when things actually belonged to us. From the biggest vendors to the smallest sellers, I’m convinced that this buy-to-rent model, or as it’s commonly known, the subscription system, is nothing more than a scheme to maximize seller profits and push monthly recurring revenue, MRR, to its highest possible level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a time when we bought something and it was ours. The company didn’t need to keep providing a service. We didn’t need a server. That era is ending. Quietly, systematically, and with our own approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1856, the Singer sewing machine company had a problem. Their machines were really good. Too good. Once you bought one, you never needed to buy another. This meant unpredictable revenue and limited growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So they invented something new: pay a $5 deposit, rent the machine for $3 a month. Revolutionary for customers, they said. Affordable access to technology, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was actually happening: Singer discovered that recurring revenue was better than selling a product once. The customer pays more over time, the company earns more predictably, and the product never truly becomes yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was 1856. The rules of the game haven’t changed since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For most of computing history, software worked like everything else. You paid once, got a disk, installed it, and it worked. Forever. No internet required. No monthly bill. No server that could shut down and swallow all your tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then in 1999, Marc Benioff founded Salesforce with a friendly-sounding slogan: “No software.” What he meant was: no ownership. Just rent access to a CRM, pay monthly, and if you stop paying, you’ll lose everything you built inside it. Salesforce called this Software as a Service. Wall Street called it genius. The idea of paying for something you would never own entered the computing world for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investors loved predictable recurring revenue. Customers got easy access without upfront costs. Everyone was happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until 2013, most consumers were untouched by this shift. Salesforce was enterprise software. Ordinary people buying Photoshop could still purchase a disk and permanently license the software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then in May 2013, Adobe announced that Creative Suite 6 would be the last version available for outright purchase. Now there was Creative Cloud, at a fixed monthly fee. No subscription, no Photoshop. The backlash was immediate. A Change.org petition reached 50,000 signatures. Forums exploded. Adobe pushed forward anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it worked. Perfectly, from Adobe’s perspective. Revenue that used to spike at launch and crash in between became smooth, predictable, and continuously growing. By 2025, 96% of Adobe’s revenue was coming from subscriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adobe didn’t invent this model. But Adobe proved it worked on creative professionals who had no realistic alternative. And other companies were next in line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adobe’s move became the template for the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Microsoft had actually started down this path earlier. It launched Office 365 for enterprise customers in 2010, then opened it to general consumers in 2013 and began pushing the subscription as the primary model. But Microsoft was at least honest about it: they didn’t kill the perpetual license entirely, and single-purchase Office versions<\/a> are still available today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Autodesk didn’t leave even that option on the table. Starting in January 2016, they stopped selling new perpetual licenses. July 2016 was the deadline. Architects, engineers, and designers who had worked with this software since 1982 woke up one morning to find it was no longer for sale. Subscribe or find an alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The timeline looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every company had the same justification: better updates, better access, better experience. What none of them said out loud was also the same: more predictable revenue, lower churn risk, and making it increasingly painful to leave the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The math is simple and ruthless. Monthly payments seem cheap at first, because they genuinely are at first. But five years later you’re still paying. And you still own nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The industry’s argument is always the same: you get updates, you get new features, you get cloud sync. What they don’t mention: you never wanted most of those updates, you’ll never use most of those features, and the cloud sync exists specifically to make leaving their platform more painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Why I Chose a Different Path<\/h2>\n\n\n\n