These perpetual licenses are capitalism run amok. No one has an issue with subscriptions these days, but you should be able still compile and distribute your software without paying them into perpetuity if you're not worried about their latest and greatest. I'm just waiting for them to end LGPL in the next few years and why I don't use it any more. I use wxwidgets. Which I don't like as much but it gets the job done and I'm not doing anything fancy.
