I will bow to peer pressure and not add any further comments, even though I LOVE a good discussion about politics and economics.  Hence I suppose my degree in economics, lol.

Kroneborge
I will bow to peer pressure and not add any further comments, even though I LOVE a good discussion about politics and economics.  Hence I suppose my degree in economics, lol.

You are not alone in this.  Political discussions just happen to be against the TOS for this site so most of us refrain.  I get the policy because they are lightning rods for forum filling wars.  In real life I do my best to avoid discussing the following:
 
Politics
Religion
Guns
Abortion
 
There are probably a couple others but they are usually related.   I may add IKM to that list lol I find that people who are passionate about any of those issues are almost impossible to have a rational discussion with unless you agree with them.  In some cases, it's not enough to agree with them for the most part. True ideologues tend to accept nothing less than 100% agreement and that goes for both sides of each of those issues.  i end up having my conservative friends cal lme liberal and my liberal friends calling me conservative and me thinking all of them are collectively full of $#!+ :)

I think a lot of the times it's because it's easier to try and categorize people into little boxes instead of actually listening and evaluating their arguments. But if you actually can have a real conversation with people then you find that no one is really all conservative, or liberal or whatever.
 
Growing up in the family I did, we always loved to talk about politics, religion, guns and abortion, lol.
 
Though the first time my wife met my family when we were leaving she asked us why we were all fighting, I said we weren't fighting just having a normal discussion.  Just we all get excited and talk loud and wave our hands around :)

DeeringAmps
"But this just underscores what I said about having choices and owning/controlling what you buy. If you want, you should be able to choose when to apply updates. Again, let me emphasize what I see as a dichotomy between a model that works for large companies, and a model that would work (assuming such a thing is possible) for individuals and small businesses."
 
This has been the Cakewalk business model all along!
I have ALWAYS stressed "follow the upgrade path".
Substitute "subscription" for "upgrade".

That's a really good point...Cakewalk already has a subscription model, it's just yearly instead of monthly  You get to keep what you own, AND you can choose whether or not to renew your "subscription" every year.
 
Problem solved. Thank you!

lol.  sounds like my family.  i agree, most people are not that one sided. The ones that are tend to be unbearable to be around. I worked for a tea party guy once and it was torture.  Every word out his mouth was some biazarre rant and the people he brought by the office were downright scary. I'm not saying every member of the tea party is insane.  Just this guy and his cronies.  I have a cousin who is one of the most prominent tea party members in the country.  She's not crazy.  She just likes getting in front of the camera and i=I think if  some leftwing org had given her the same opportunity she would have taken it.  It's all theater

 Well I guess I can't complain about my Imageline "subscription".  I haven't paid for an update on any of my licenses.
I haven't heard people complain about the Photoshop subscription. I would have a hard time doing that with a DAW.   

As much as I want to get into the really intelligent conversation that dub and krone are having, I will stay on topic!

Yes CW has a subscription plan. Many have said exactly that many times over the years.

However, when ever I decide not to "upgrade," my software that I already have bought will still work. I will still be able to use it (in the OS it was designed around). That is what I really am paying for.

When I started my t-shirt printing business in 2013 (which I subsequently sold) I bought hard copies of Illustrator and Photoshop CS6 for about $1000. If I had used the Subscription model (@ $50/mo) I would have paid $700 (for 14 months of use). IIRC, once I stopped the Subscription (since I was over 12 months) I would have had the latest version CS7, or I would have had nothing (if I'm wrong about Adobe's model).
 
At the time I had the cash for the hard copies and thought I would be in business for years to come and upgrades were probably not necessary (they were t-shirts for goodness sake). How was I to know I'd made a bad decision? I couldn't since the (read: my) world changes daily.
 
For my DAW(s) I typically follow the upgrade path and remain content to do so.
 
 

Anderton
 
That's a really good point...Cakewalk already has a subscription model, it's just yearly instead of monthly  You get to keep what you own, AND you can choose whether or not to renew your "subscription" every year.
 

 
I thought you didn't know when X4 was coming out ?

Hey dubdisciple - just a quick one on an After Effects alternative... Whilst there's none I'm aware of that would fully replace it, I've been impressed by Hitfilm. It's only a few years old, but they've made lots of progress and especially their particle system (true 3D) is very impressive. Personally, I still use AE for most of my work as I tend to use expressions a lot, but like you, I'm not particularly fond of the subscription model (I'm still on CS5.5)... so, I'll see what Hitfilm 3 will be like and am seriously considering going for that. 
 
www.hitfilm.com
 
cheers