So real answer time on subs from the Adobe side. Albeit not popular.

The real reason for subscription based licencing is push updates based on new tech with Adobe. Back in the day you had to wait for a new version of Premiere/Photoshop etc to support new camera codecs or new features like background proxy generation. This had to do with what's considered a new software package and software patent law with how you pay devs.

So you pay for features ABC for version 10. And pay for features ABCDE in version 11. But it you're paying a subscription service they can "live" update the produt to rollout ABCDEFGH constantly as they're ready to ship.

Yeah it's basically Adobe being cheap and not wanting to pay their devs better and for that I definitely agree fuck sub models. But for us professionals live updates in post is a godsend and also allowed our camera and production tech to upgrade at breakneck speeds.

At the end of the day Adobe is the best choice because the alternatives are mostly not software dev and UI focused. And they are on top of their game tech wise. So we're pretty much at their mercy on how they wanna charge us. I'm always excited to see what BMD is doing with DaVinci Resolve - the best pro color grading software out there btw. They've been pushing their NLE editing package of the software hard and is free, highly recommend. Would love to see them overtake Adobe like Adobe overtook Avid.