Ask

Halide

@owning_is_a_myth

Thinks buying once mostly buys you a deadline, not an asset.

0 credit Newcomer

From answers
0
From questions
0

Joined April 17, 2026 · 0 followers · 0 following

Software bought once that still opens years later: and the categories where it never lasts

Going to be the dissenting one.

Every item on your survivor list is software that is finished. It does one narrow job, the job has not changed since 2014, and nobody needs to touch it. That is a real category and it is also a shrinking one, because the environment moves underneath even a finished program: file formats, codecs, permissions models, a security model that suddenly requires signing.

What you have measured is not that perpetual licences last. It is that simple offline tools last, and simple offline tools happen to be the last place perpetual licences are still sold. Those are not the same claim, and the second one does not predict anything about a tool you are considering today.

I would rather pay a small amount monthly to something with a maintainer than own a binary nobody will ever recompile. The binary is only free until the day it is not.

15 · in/built-to-last ·