While I distrust most large businesses, especially those interested in pursuing my money and messing with my credit, I don’t find the Adobe CC model obnoxious or predatory. Subscription is the mode du jour, and CC is different only in degree than Flickr, Dropbox, Apple Music, et al. Some pay Flickr what they want (not me), some pay for sustainability and backup in Lightroom (me).
The Lightroom developers have invited me, and maybe some of you, to rate and evaluate and write in detail about recent changes to LR Classic and Lightroom CC, and about what we’d like to see in the future. It’s a decent opportunity, *if* you’d like to see a resumption of the stand-alone/upgrade model (e.g. LR 7), to tell them so directly. I’ve suggested it to them, because I know there are folks here and at Leica Users who’d prefer that model as a pararallel/alternative to LR CC.
Engaging with the image-techs and computer scientists and photographers who work on LR is more positive than kvetching about the status quo, in this case, widely adopted subscription-based services. Positive alternative: Stick with film and wet darkroom and the mail for promoting one’s work. That’s entirely respectable, but not how I work.