Having dealt with software with “maintenance” fees in the past, it isn’t necessarily the same as a subscription.
First, maintenance is something you pay on top of the original license purchase. It was usually the case that the original license costs more, perhaps several times more, than the annual maintenance.
For one software package, we dropped paying maintenance because we were no longer using the product, but after a couple years we wanted to start using it again and needed upgrades and support. We could continue using the software without maintenance, But to renew maintenance we had to pay back-maintenance fees!
In another software package, which was over $10k a seat + maintenance, they basically discontinued the product going to a new one with a slightly different name. While maintenance covered updates (which were no longer occurring!) it did not cover the new version. So we had to pay again for the software!
So I’ve considered “maintenance” to just be a legal form of extortion.
