Monotype has been buying up type foundries both big and small. If you have been buying fonts at all on any sort of basis (frequent or only once in awhile) chances are Monotype now owns the rights to some or many of those fonts.
These are very small and very niche and the fact that I don't see them on monotype's site, leads me to believe that they haven't. Or nothing has been officially changed yet on their site if they have.
Subscription services are not always a bad thing.
For software that is used to make one money, yes it is. Too many things can happen, features that one may use are deprecated and/or removed at the drop of a hat. And not much one can do about it, because being able to keep that older version is just not allowed anymore. Plus, this always online is just not a good thing at all. It allows for many vectors of malware (in the vary broadest of terms) to come in and gunk up your system with that perpetual online. It adds in a lot of convenience, but most people (including OEM vendors) have very little in the way of security for such things. It is just the best way to enforce DRM of the software.
I don't mind subscription.
Yes, you never truly own the software, ....
The irony is, we never truly owned the software to begin with. Not even with perpetual licenses. The biggest difference between that time period and now is the ease of which DRM can be enforced. That is really it. Software was always licensed, at best what the user bought and had "ownership" of was the physical means of conveyance, that is it.
...but it allows the company to get more revenue, which means they get to further invest into the software.
more, sooner updates.
Ahh yea, the pipe dream. Although, some actually do it justice, but not everyone does.
Your assuming that the more, sooner updates are actually of quality (sometimes yes, sometimes no), also, a feature that you use today, may not be available tomorrow at a moment's notice(why I tend to suggest people know the manual/semi manual tools as that allows for a much easier path to jump ship if need be, try not to be beholding to software specific needs (this is why I'm able to use Blender even for 2D work compared to having to have a 2D specific program(and that ain't easy, but it does work)).
This is good in theory, but in practice not really so much.
The are some updates that I would just never need, so them doing those updates means squat to me, but because I'm on a subscription service, I have to deal with all that that brings, change in the UI, differences in function interaction etc. It used to be quality updates was what brings in the updates and the people buying. That incentive is not really there and if a program has a pretty good hold of a market segment, they can get away with that longer compared to a small fry doing it. Because that migration path isn't as easy/open for the customer to go elsewhere.
And what i like, is if you find another software, you can cancel, it and jump ship.
While I have not only done that with programs, but an entire OS, that isn't as easy as it may seem. Some reasons/excuses that I have heard:
Too old to learn something new
All my master files are in x format
Can't do Y function (either it's software specific or it is available, but not in the same manor as in the previous software(going back to the first reason/excuse as well))
In general it is far easier for people to stick with what they know and sometimes having so much invested in one program, makes it hard to cut ties off and start over again.
I also understand some people don't care and rather own it.
each to their own.
Unless people are getting the source code with the program (and even open source does have caveats depending on the license) or writing their own (and I have done this and even in C/C++ as well, not as hard as one thinks, definitely not like it was when I was first exposed to those languages many moons ago in HS), one doesn't own the program. What it really boils down to is more control over the tools that people use to make a living.
As to Canva opening up more doors, what it does is attempt to abstract more away so more people can do what used to be handled by professionals. I don't mind that if those people actually learned what was going on, but they don't. That bar is going more and more downward. Why I'm not too much of a fan of AI as well. As tools bring more abstractions, the knowledge of what goes on in the background is no longer retained (if they knew it in the first place).
