Go back and look at the boxes/manuals of games that even came on 3.5" diskettes. Software being license-based has nothing to do with software as a service. I don't blame you for not realizing it because most people never bothered to understand that because "physical object = license" made it a distinction without difference.
Remember shareware? "Shareware" refers to the license terms. Open Source? GPL is a license. Apache is a license. MIT is a license. BSD is a license. They are all licenses. They always have been. It has nothing to do with digital distribution, subscriptions or SaaS.
Even the non-commercial stuff is usually licensed. Maybe there's some rare commercial software release out there that had no terms whatsoever, but that would be such a rare case it's not really worth considering. So yes, it's the only business practice.
You do realize software existed and was sold as a product before the software as a service business model was created, right?
Go back and look at the boxes/manuals of games that even came on 3.5" diskettes. Software being license-based has nothing to do with software as a service. I don't blame you for not realizing it because most people never bothered to understand that because "physical object = license" made it a distinction without difference.
Remember shareware? "Shareware" refers to the license terms. Open Source? GPL is a license. Apache is a license. MIT is a license. BSD is a license. They are all licenses. They always have been. It has nothing to do with digital distribution, subscriptions or SaaS.
Even the non-commercial stuff is usually licensed. Maybe there's some rare commercial software release out there that had no terms whatsoever, but that would be such a rare case it's not really worth considering. So yes, it's the only business practice.