Microsoft's revenue in 1990 was 1.18B when they launched Office, sold for one-time payments. Of course they're pushing people to subscribe now so they can get that sweet recurring revenue, but that business model sustained freaking Microsoft for about 30 years.

I'm not convinced by unsustainability arguments. Now, it could be that competing with FOSS makes it a lot harder to make money now. I'm sympathetic to that, inasmuch as I can be for someone who wants to sell what others are giving away. That would be challenging. But why is it suddenly impossible to sell software, when they was the common model until rental became popular a few years ago? What's inherently different now that let someone sell programs for decades but now it's just impossible?

buying - capital expenditure with amortization (and usually goes through a lot of approvals, centralized IT, etc.), subscription - expense, frequently decided upon and paid directly by the Line-Of-Business/dept. Expense is generally better, so it is chosen by business when possible (it is all very generic of course, and there are niche cases where situation is different)

That matches on the supplying side as subscription revenue is also generally better.