While I’m sympathetic to that, I’ve (somewhat) come around on the notion of “subscription apps” if the developers are responsible with it. I’ve found that in most cases, new features that would probably be held for major version releases (e.g., “this is a feature that would entice you to pay for the upgrade”) just come out when they’re ready; it’s essentially shifting the app to a rolling release model. The traditional commercial model of “buy the new major version and get free updates until the next major version that makes you buy it again, hopefully at a discount” does always give you the option of not upgrading if you don’t want the new features, to be sure, but if you are a regular user and tend to buy upgrades as they come out, the price difference tends to be minimal.

Having said that, I’m not sure a subscription model makes sense for an app like MindNode, since I’d bet a majority of its users only work on mind maps sporadically That’s conjecture on my part, of course, and I could be absolutely wrong, but I suspect people who do everything with mind maps are fairly few and far between. Paying annually for Ulysses, a writing app I really do use every day, is one thing; paying for MindNode, which I use maybe once a quarter, is a big ask.

Ah I didn't realise. I have it through SetApp, which itself is a subscription, albeit an easier subscription to swallow as you get access to a number of great apps.

I've been using the free version for years. Never needed any of the premium features to create a useful mindmap.