Thanks for double-checking me on that. I am also bothered by subscriptions and try to avoid them. I understand the subscription comment was only a minor point you made, but I'll take that as an opening
In the case of a password manager, I want to pay regularly.
I want a password company that invests heavily in constant research into the risks and security techniques to address those. I feel like I'm paying for more than a license to their software. When I give them money, I feel I'm paying for the research that will be applied to the next release. The worst thing I can imagine is a small software shop where the developers have to have other software jobs to make enough money.
Much of the work they do will have no concrete output, but I still want it done. They have to go to conferences, exchange ideas with their security peers in the industry, evaluate changing operating environments (OS, browser), and evaluate new threats. They also have to invest heavily in communication through posts and heavy forum participation.
Security professionals aren't cheap. This is not commodity software they're writing.
Other people are more casual. It would take a lot of definitions and study to determine whether being casual is good enough or what level of casual is optimal. A very casual attitude towards passwords might be incompatible with paying for password management at all. I'm not casual and I think about the nightmare of a password breach a lot.
BitWarden offers a version of their software for free. I only trust it because I know the company makes money from their paying subscribers. I hope people who can easily afford to pay don't just use the free version; someone has to fund the constant work.