Own Forever

When ATOK dropped its perpetual license, I was quietly bummed.

I had used that Japanese input method for years. Each major version, I bought the box, ran the installer. Then it went subscription. Five dollars a month. Cheap. I know it is cheap. That is not the point.

Adobe moved to subscriptions over a decade ago. People who owned Creative Suite outright woke up one morning as renters. From the company's perspective, it makes sense. Predictable revenue. No more betting the year on a single major release. Steady investment. Healthier development cycles. All good. I understand this intellectually.

It still does not sit right.

Let me prepay thirty years. Just sell it to me outright. I would say a hundred, but I will not live that long, so thirty is the deal. Give me a license key. Let me save it in a text file. Let me run the thing offline, forever.

I do not like online activation. Every launch, the software pings a server somewhere, asking permission to run. What if the server goes down? What if the company folds? What if the network drops? Something you paid for, sitting right there on your disk, and you cannot use it. That is not ownership.

I know this is an offline-generation instinct. People who grew up always-connected probably cannot feel this anxiety. Those of us who lived through dial-up know what a disconnected world looks like. In that world, only the things that still worked were truly yours.

My iPhone today, without a network, is a brick. Do I own it, or am I renting it? I genuinely cannot tell anymore.