Clearly this thread has again moved to the 'PLease Lock This' mode so I will bow out.

What Adobe chooses to do, I could care less, just not much less.  As has been said very often, a company has the right to manage.  Even when they manage to alienate most of their customer base and they "Manage" themselves out of existence.  Usually when this happens, it's not a  bad thing.

I have Gimp, I have Photo Plus, Gimp serves most of my needs.  I have PSE also, and after I had to reinstall windows to get rid of whatever that threw in the computer, you won't see me putting anything like that in again.  Once burned, twice learned.

Doric.

While they do not have a monopoly at all, they have become a huge household name.... we even use 'I'm going to photoshop that bit out and so on' regardless if you do it with photoshop or not. There are alternatives, but as soon as you start working with printing companies and so on, how far will these alternatives get you? Not too far they expect you to have photoshop and even create their own printing profiles for it.

The thing is large companies tend to misuse their position. MS is starting to do it, now Adobe, who's next? They don't sell you software anymore, they lease it to you, since that's what it really is. But..... do we get the option to keep the leased software after the lease runs out or do we as with leased cars have to pay another fee to be able to keep on using the software after a year or is the lease over and we have to move on to the next version whether we like it or not, to prevent we end up with nothing at all.

As said before, bye Adobe, just as much as I've said bye, bye, MS Office.... I can live without and get one of the excellent alternatives, that work just as good and for sure are a lot faster and less memory hungry.

Certainly, with Microsoft's volume subscription licensing, after the end of the 3 year subscription, there is a buyout option...

...which converts the licenses to perpetual. It isn't cheap. But it is cheaper than buying new perpetual licenses... even with software assurance added on.

We're done.

Locking thread.