Originally posted by AfterPentax Mark II
I guess you think you have a full license, but as far as I know that licence is only valid as long as you are subscribed to it, which is their stated policy. You only have a lifetime licence if you have a stand alone version for which you pay once. That lifetime license is only for that version of the program and the free updates that belong to that license. So yes, in a way you are locked in to paying forever if you want to use the LR Classic edit options, they cannot deny you access to your pictures, unless they were saved to their cloud facility which ended as soon as you cancelled your membership. But they can not deny your access to your own edited images on your computer, you are able to view them with any photo viewer you like. It is a bit like a subscription to a magazine, as long as you pay you will receive monthly editions, after cancelling the subscription you are not getting new editions, but you can keep on reading the old editions. That is what Adobe does, you ended the subscription and you keep access to your edited images (which means you can view them), but cannot change, or create new, edits. They do not have to provide a free software for that.
This, also, is not completely true. They have no obligation to provide updates to the software to keep it running as computers and operating systems continue to evolve. For instance, varieties of macOS through Mojave will allow you to run 32-bit software. More recent varieties of macOS will not. The stand alone versions of Lightroom and Photoshop are 64-bit apps and
should run on newer versions of macOS. However, if you upgrade your mac to a newer model that comes with a newer version of macOS, Adobe treats your existing Lightroom and Photoshop installations as being new. Both apps try to phone home to verify that you are authorized to run them. However, the software that phones home is only 32-bit and will not run on the new computer. Consequently, since you can't run the needed software, you can't authorize them, you can't run the apps, and can't use them to access your existing edited files. There is no known workaround for this and Adobe has neither any plans to make 64-bit versions of the authorization software, nor any incentive to do so. Calls to tech support are a waste of time because they won't provide a solution to this -- or at least they wouldn't when I was bitten by it late last year.