Pretty much all software companies now have ongoing costs associated with the software after you would have purchased it - ops, hosting, security updates, and backports for compatability. In order to sell it to you and have it make sense they'd need to charge you a lot for it - the cost of keeping it up for however long you might use it. Essentially you'd need to pay ten years worth of subscription costs and just not have a choice in the matter. I'm sure they would prefer that, but you wouldn't buy it at that price because you know you probably won't use it for that long. Also, maintaining multiple versions of the thing is going to be a lot more expensive than just getting everyone on the current version. So, the company which has ongoing costs charges you an ongoing bill because it makes the most sense for both of you.

I think that maybe what you really don't like is the fact that US monopolies are not regulated and so all of your options suck whether or not they are SaaS companies.