[RowanH]

30+ years in the software industry. Everyone did this back in the day - then it changed for 3 reasons (1) completely unsustainable (2) people didn't upgrade, or being forced to upgrade and pay large prices got grumpy about it. (3) the money people figured out subscriptions were more profitable.

There's tonnes of companies that have legacy 'pay upfront' models, that hit the wall as they'd saturated their markets, then their revenue stream dropped off and all of a sudden saw the wall of transitioning to web/mobile needing to happen and didn't have the funds to pull it off.

I'd almost completely forgotten about it until I was challenged by a prospect in a meeting monday 'is this one of these new lease software systems, I want to own it!" had to educate him on the way the world worked now...

[theshrike79]

> (3) the money people figured out subscriptions were more profitable.

Subscriptions bring in steady money that allows for better forecasting and resourcing.

Releasing a Very Big Paid Update every year or two years brings in an unknown lump sum of money with a tail end that might or might not be enough.