I commented in the parallel thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23905523 . Basically, commercial scientific software has long had a software product model based on yearly support/upgrades, scientific software has a long history where even decades-old code bases are useful, and pharmaceutical research has a practice of doing their database searches and research in-house, in order to protect trade secrets.

So I think scientific software is more amenable to this sort of product+support model than you do.

Or rather, what I think of as a product sale includes a support contract or occasional re-purchase at full price, rather than a pure fire-and-forget model like embedded software.