This was the point that made a bunch of people (me included) absolutely furious with Plex. Like I gladly pay for services and donate to open source projects. But it hits differently to pay for my very own hardware being used.
---
As a more serious response - The last time I purchased MS office (decade+ ago) I paid once for a product license I could use forever. That felt fair - I buy a tool, I use it.
Plex had that payment model and got a lot less pushback from the community - but this whole "we're a SaaS now!" thing is just not going to fly.
I just don't trust the company anymore, and Jellyfin is absolutely great.
As a matter of fact, I paid them 150€ for a "lifetime license" - because a long time ago, that was their business model.
I too left for jellyfin because of their pivot to being "Netflix" as paxys phrased it.
They just decided to throw away the market they established themselves into previously. Saltines should be expected at that.
Images are worse still, I know anyone serious about personal photos probably uses Lightroom, but damn. There aren't any rips harsh enough to describe Plex's image support.
And really, it would've been nice if we could share game roms for emulation (with high-score support and remote game-saves).
But damn if it wasn't magical having all those movies at your fingertips in the early 2000s.