One of the reasons I stopped doing photography was that I realized I’m locked to using Lightroom where all my previous pictures are, and without a subscription it’s such a hassle to gain access to them again. I miss the days when I just bought Lightroom and that was it. :-(
Yes but settings for any existing photos are non-transferable between different RAW editing systems, by design. Even different versions of the same software have to keep around all old code for compatibility.
One of the last 2 pieces of perpetual license pieces of photo software I have left. This software segment has almost entirely been consumed by subscriptions.