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.

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.

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. It has nothing to do with digital distribution, subscriptions or SaaS.