Why would there be no contract with a local app? At the company scales you're talking about, enterprise, there absolutely will be. These aren't going to be standalone 100 dollar apps for that level of scale.
>At the company scales you're talking about, enterprise, there absolutely will be.
Many very large enterprise software providers (Sage, Oracle, IBM) and small OSS shops (Grafana, Zabbix, ProxMox) offer run local versions of ERPs or entire applications with no usage restrictions. The licensing pays for support and updates, not usage. In this model, the software provider has incentive to provide good support, and quality updates. They care to maintain the product because their care is what they are selling.
So, it won't absolutely be the case at this scale. Business as usual is the opposite of that at this scale. I should have to prove beyond doubt that there is no alternative when I agree to sign for SaaS. I'm agreeing to take on a lot of risk when I do that.
>Why would there be no contract with a local app?
Because that's what I want to buy, and for good reason (see above). And someone has figured that out and sold it to me.
