Wow, really great insight--I've never seen it framed like this before, but it makes so much sense. Typically software becomes worse over time, and therefore uncompetitive with previous versions of the same software. The fix? Never make the previous software available, and force users to upgrade to the worse, new version.

This explains a lot about why subscriptions have become the norm.

They were also incentivised to stuff as many new features into their products in order to make them look like they were worth upgrading.

Look at how bad Adobe Acrobat got before they even started thinking about subscriptions.

If you have a product and a team working on it, it’s tempting to just keep adding things to the product. You can’t just sit around fixing bugs, they say. When that is precisely what customers would want. Can’t make upsells though and when you’re a business that kind of thing really matters… nobody from within can see that the ship is so heavy it can’t stay afloat anymore. Until it’s sunk.