This is an interesting question to me because Adobe only recently moved to cloud/subscription fairly recently. Before that, you could get a physical copy of Photoshop and keep it running forever.
As that pathway fades, it will be interesting to see if something will finally supplant Photoshop.
Adobe obviously doesn't care. They treat their customers like crap and actively try to extract as much money out of them as possible. A few years ago (or less) they worded their description of their monthly subscription very carefully, so as to mislead people into thinking they could pay for a month or two when they needed it, and then cancel. The fact was that monthly only allowed you to pay each month, it was still an annual subscription which could not be cancelled without substantial early termination penalty (basically paying the whole remainder of the year if my memory serves me correctly). If they really cared about their customers, they would have made that very clear when you signed up for service. I helped a family member sign up, and there was no explanation, and no warning about cancellation.
I wasn't thrilled about the subscription model in the first place, but this family member needed access to the tool. After the way that went down, I have no intention of doing business with Adobe ever again. I know a lot of other people who feel the same way.
(edited to fix a typo)
I'm not a fan of Adobe's payment practices. But they do treat us well in one regard. They give us one thing that we can't get anywhere else. The best photo editing software on the market.
Its best photo editing software because people are so used to it its hard to move and everybody new has to learn it because its industry standard.
But photo editing is not some arcane magic like it was in 90s. Freaking photopea.com does what photoshop does often much faster in browser. Not to mention million other affinity/pixelmator/acorn native apps.
GIMP is just awful. It's worse than any of the commercial Mac paint programs including Pixelmator, acorn, etc.
I can only conclude the reason that these inherent problems with GIMP have remained uncorrected for so long is that its developers couldn't give a damn whether we use it or not.
It seems only a play toy for its cliquey developers and the only reason it's available at all is that we gullible users act as occasional bug detectors.
Sure, open software has resoure problems hence expected delays but too much water has flowed under the bridge for that now to be a viable excuse.
User ergonomics in software is extremely important and its removal is a big anti-feature. At the time GIMP's developers didn't offer an apology, they just said that's the way it's going to be on 'technical grounds'.
Also, Photoshop CS3 which is my last paid version (moreover, I can still reinstall it as Adobe temporarily released a general version with an unlocked key when it abolished the CS3 licensing server some years ago).
I even use IrfanView viewer as it has a nice batch converter (although it's no good for 48-bit work).
Frankly, there's no shortage of image editors even after eliminating GIMP and Photoshop.
In the case of Windows, the machine can be eventually upgraded, one part at a time, into something more powerful.