I think it was more about how can this guarantee be made. Companies fail. Buyouts can happen. Just because its touted as "lifetime" today doesn't mean it will be around in a few years. The Movie pass debacle in the US this past year shows how things can ebb and flow
Agreed, I'm doing a yearly sub for this reason. Nothing to say they won't go away, restructure, get bought out, a better alternative won't come along, or frankly just make some decisions with the software I don't agree with.
the 1.6 update was a mess rendering it largely unusable for a week or more for some. I'll pay as I go. This means that I'll almost certainly pay more than $500 in the long run, but that's fine for me.
One omission from the review, especially discussing cost, is that a Raspberry Pi can be turned into a Roon bridge in just a few minutes with RoPieee -
RoPieee: a RoonBridge ready-to-go image for Raspberry Pi
I replaced two Sonos connects with two of these, at the princely sum £30 each - there's your lifetime cost right there, and with USB output really only equalled by the Aries Mini (again, your sub right there, and you don't have to use the Auralic app which I found pretty poor)
If you already have infrastructure running for Plex and other home IT services, it's effectively free to run the core as well. I have 2x vCPUs and 4GB memory assigned to my core and it's not even touching the sides on that...
Docker images are also available so you may be able to run it on your NAS. I find the proposition (or rather, cost) of the Nucleus faintly ridiculous, however can see how an IT-phobe would like a turn-key solution that looks at home in a hifi rack.
It's also high on WAF if you have multiple streaming ecosystems - Sonos, Bluesound, Airplay, B&W's new gear, DIY and so on, so perhaps an easier approval than others from the procurement director in cases where that matters.
I'm a big fan if that's not already clear. Wouldn't be without it now.