With perpetual license, you needed to provide some value to drive that customer who bought from you 5 years ago a reason to upgrade. Now with subscription models, you just have to coast and keep the lights on for those customers.

True, but it’s that market preference is a pendulum. It swings back and forth. It’s funny how hard companies are pushing today to (fail to) keep it from swimming swinging back towards owning things.

Companies that try to charge monthly for service that isn’t improving eventually lose their customers, except in the rare cases where stability is the only customer motivation.