I get what you mean about aligning incentives. I do want to support devs in a way that these types of projects are sustainable, but the way other products shut off access to your stuff once you stop paying make subscription models an unnecessary risk. Having a free tier like yours really helps.
Generally I try to buy the tool and three years of support upfront. Otherwise I'm at risk of it being deleted because we can't have software if it doesn't have a support contract 'in case there are bugs'. These rules are written by cretins in 'IT' and accountants.
Anyway, put the bit about flexible licencing on your order page.
That is the thing missing from Charles for our QA folks.
It is highly annoying to have to hook the iOS app up to Xcode just to be able to see the wss traffic when tracking down a bug.
The newer "Fiddler Everywhere" might also be able to do it, possibly even better, but I dislike the UI and I'm used to Classic so I've stuck to that.
Tracked here: https://github.com/httptoolkit/httptoolkit/issues/36. You can subscribe to the GH issue for updates if you're interested.
There is a subscription for Pro features, but most users don't need it - you can do most things common use cases need (all interception & inspection, manual traffic rewriting, almost everything that doesn't need advanced configuration) with just the free version. It's also 100% open-source, even the paid bits.
That said, imo subscriptions provide lots of benefits as a model for both sides. Basically by aligning how much value users get with how much they pay - cheap for quick use, expensive for extensive heavy use, strong incentive to fix bugs & support existing users instead of chasing the next shiny launch.
I hear your point about approvals anyway. If subscriptions are impossible, I can do one-off indefinite licenses - send me an email at [email protected]