I like the idea of the way Reaper is trying to operate, but they have a bit of a flaw. With no copy protection and a fully functional demo, if you download the demo, it works unrestricted and doesn’t time out - so you can run the demo license free for ever for what ever purpose you desire. So it’s all down to trust - and that does not work in business.
Though does any commercial studio with a $20K+ turnover want to use Reaper?
anyway, back on topic, if Cubase goes to subscription, I will simply stay on the last dongled version and never upgrade Cubase ever again.