Might be a long ride for you unfortunately. You pay a monthly subscription to somebody to give you an IP address to reach the rest of us already, whether it is on your local loop or on a mobile device. This concept now extends to software. SW maintenance, and currency with new hardware, OS, standards etc. is an expensive proposition, and only gets more so with complexity. This is NOT including new features or improvements on existing ones. Subscriptions (or per per use) will be the norm for most sw companies going forward.But I don't have to buy my electricity or oil from a single company. I could even install equipment to generate my own electricity.
But this is a bit different. Perhaps it would be clearer this way. If you paint a picture, how would you feel sending a check to the paint manufacturer every month to view the painting?
I cannot say that Adobe went about this in the most customer friendly way, but it is an inevitable outcome.
The painting analogy is fallacious. If your file is stored in JPG or TIFF, you can view it whenever and however you like. However, you are talking about not just viewing, when you extend this to .PSD format.
I don't use PS too much, but extending the analogy to C1, i can say with certainty that when I take the same RAW file with C1 3.1 and C1 8.1, the later gives me much better results, and I am happy to pay P1 in the form of a subscription or upgrade for the improvement. I do the same with Adobe.