I've been looking into this recently (I'm thinking of getting one, and the subscription had put me off previously). As far as I can tell, there was originally no subscription, then they introduced it, I think with the Remarkable 2, with a basic subscription offering infinite synced storage, and a higher tier subscription offering a bunch of additional features like screen share and handwriting recognition.

They've done removed the higher tier subscription, and all of the additional features are available as standard with the device itself, no subscription required. The infinite storage, however, still requires a subscription, but only the basic tier (3€/month, I think).

Tbh, it makes me lose a certain amount of trust in a company for trying that sort of "pay for extra features" thing out, but they've withdrawn most of it and I think the current approach is significantly more reasonable. And as you say, it's still a Linux device in the end, so you've got a lot more flexibility than you might on other devices.

I am looking at this as a person, who is intrigued, but who effectively is hesitant to lock myself into another long term relationship with a corporation.

The opening page says:

"Try reMarkable and Connect risk free. If you decide to return it, we offer a full refund within 100 days. After your 1-year free subscription ends, Connect costs $2.99/mo. Cancel anytime."

This may be intentional, but this does not automatically alleviate my concerns.

<< I will not consider an eink device of this type that I cannot ssh into.

Other posts suggest I can, but there is nothing indicating this on their landing page. I think it is safe to say, techies are not considered an important target demographic.

You absolutely can ssh into it. Their marketing team can be forgiven for trying to be appealing to the orders of magnitude more non-techies out there. It’s a hardware company, they’d go out of business very quickly just selling to hobbyist technical types.