> people spend $X per month on the Adobe Suite, and people tend to enjoy that.
I work in the graphic design industry, and I've got news for you... people do not enjoy Adobe's move to subscription pricing, and on the contrary still complain about it.
Anecdotal evidence, I suppose, but seriously... I haven't met a single person who prefers Creative Cloud to just buying the suites.
My friend who's a graphic designer had to reinstall Windows because, surprise surprise, one of earlier Windows 10 builds released for Windows 7 bricked her machine and that of course comes with reinstalling all software as well. And the fun started when she had to reinstall Adobe stuff: she couldn't reactivate one of older Photoshop she bought because it wasn't supported anymore - it couldn't connect to Adobe servers; helpdesk suggested her moving to CC which was out of the question for her. In the end, she pick the different solution suggested by her friend that doesn't come as SaaS.
Had two of these scenarios too where the software was suddenly not activated anymore. Nothing helped, didn't want to reinstall the OS. At some point I just thought that since the license is there, piracy is the way to go.
The cracked versions installed without issues and neither used any cloud functionality.
A stripped down installer for Windows might also be the way to go here. Of course updates would pose a problem.
A cracked version was indeed suggested to her as well but she decided it's too risky since it was her working machine - in case of any authorities control she'd have to explain whole situation.
Some additional story that I recalled: in the past - around 2003 IIRC, OpenOffice was sold in Poland by some small company so others could use it freely as an alternative to MS Office and fiscal control wouldn't have a reason to give you a fine for using unlicensed software. Luckily, in 2005 some sane people at Gdańsk tax office "figured out" that free and open source software is ok to use and made GNU GPL legal.
With alternative softwares like Figma, Sketch and Affinity, I've been seeing a lot of designers migrate away. Sadly and tangential to other discussions, Figma is the only one that will run cross-platform being WASM-based.
I personally had been holding on to Windows/Mac through college til this subscription model. Since I really only do photo work now, darktable and RawTherapee are great FOSS alternatives. Krita and GIMP get way more flack than they deserve.
I work in the graphic design industry, and I've got news for you... people do not enjoy Adobe's move to subscription pricing, and on the contrary still complain about it.
Anecdotal evidence, I suppose, but seriously... I haven't met a single person who prefers Creative Cloud to just buying the suites.