They survived the 90's because they weren't subscription-based back then. They could charge a lot more, but they had to actually invest in development so that clients would be willing to pay for an upgrade. Once development started stagnating, and they had an enormous market share, they could switch over to the subscription model and start charging people to access the software (and their files) in perpetuity.

the affinity suite is a good alternative if you're not on linux, not that adobe supports linux last i checked. There's also https://www.photopea.com/ Really depends on the use case, plenty of better painting options out there now. For photo editing, a dedicated raw editor can cover a lot of territory. For compositing heavy stuff, I use gimp or even blender. inkscape is awesome for vector work.

i could go on. i think a lot of people forget how difficult it was to learn adobe software when they started, and it's tough to switch and lose that muscle memory, but even if the alternatives aren't as good, most have been improving over the years and adobe has just gotten worse and worse. Redirecting money from adobe to alternatives will accelerate that.

It's also much easier to write scripts for adobe alternatives, so it's possible to get productivity boosts in that domain, depending on how you work.

businesses buy the licenses for their employees