
Adobe shambles – Why subscription software should be illegal - bricss
https://www.eoshd.com/2019/07/adobe-shambles-why-subscription-software-should-be-illegal/
======
dinkleberg
I don't like Adobe's 12 month lock-in pricing, but saying subscription
software should be illegal is ridiculous. Especially using a single company's
practices as proof.

This just strikes me as an angry rant post with a selfish premise. There is no
consideration about the sustainability of a software business and why they
tend to move towards subscription-bases. And consider how much value you are
getting out of the tool.

Does $50/month for the tool that allows you to do your trade (and always
having access to the latest features) really seem ridiculous? Seems like a
fairly trivial business expense to me.

But if you don't like it, don't use premiere. There are plenty of options out
there that aren't subscription only.

~~~
yvan-eht-nioj
The problem is that they’ve trapped businesses in with proprietary file
formats, and are now using that to bend everyone over a barrel and hold them
hostage.

You want to move to Affinity? Good luck when your corporate client requires
you to edit an .indd file created years ago when the license didn’t require
large sums of money regularly thrown at it.

~~~
danShumway
Cory Doctorow lately has been on a kick for something he calls adversarial
interoperability. He's advocating for things like making it legal to reverse-
engineer file formats.

Maybe instead of banning subscription formats, make it unenforceable for a TOS
to ban reverse-engineering for compatibility reasons.

~~~
chachachoney
>> for something he calls adversarial interoperability

Cory Doctorow has had a lot of interesting ideas, but he didn't coin the term
adveserial interoperability. It's a concept and term that predates the Web,
and is absolutely the appropriate solution to many of our current
predicaments.

All of this has happened before and it will all happen again.

------
Archit3ch
Hot take: Subscription models actually reflect the costs of software
development better than an one-off purchase. They link the value provided by
updates/maintenance to a tangible cost. If we agree that software isn't ever
finished, shouldn't the economics reflect that?

Adobe expects businessess to pay for the tools of their trade, not hobbyists.
Consumers are better served by a front-loaded buy-once model that includes
free updates, but Adobe doesn't want to be in the B2C space.

The author also describes Adobe's products as "basic tools". As someone who
doesn't use them, they seem anything but.

~~~
newscracker
> Hot take: Subscription models actually reflect the costs of software
> development better than an one-off purchase. They link the value provided by
> updates/maintenance to a tangible cost.

I don’t agree with this at all. I believe subscription models encourage
laziness and/or introduction of unnecessary or complex features (to show that
busywork is being done).

Sell a license for applications with support included for a year or whatever,
like developers used to and still do. If you continue providing more value to
customers, and if you aren’t too greedy to introduce new versions and upgrades
for trivial updates often, why would the majority of your customers not
purchase a paid upgrade every couple of years or so?

I feel there are many areas that are saturated and that developers struggle to
figure out how to add more value...or rather, extract more money from
customers (1Password in recent years is an example of this, in my experience).

~~~
zeroimpl
Note that for mobile apps, paid upgrades aren’t really an option for
developers due to the way the app stores work. Also, developers constantly
need to update apps to be compatible with new OS releases. Only the
subscription model aligns with this.

~~~
wmf
_developers constantly need to update apps to be compatible with new OS
releases._

It could be sold as a paid upgrade. Customers will complain, but they complain
more about subscriptions.

------
Isinlor
Adobe could easily crank up the price up to 10000$ per month and still, with
total certainty, it should not be illegal.

Sponsor GIMP or any other competition if you don't like Adobe product. If you
think the competition is inferior in quality, well, now you know what you pay
for.

------
kachurovskiy
I also got very upset with Adobe subscription model and simply switched to
Affinity Photo / Designer and DaVinci Resolve. Never looked back.

------
heavymark
The mass market is use to paying little up front and expect updates and fixes
forever for that one time fee which of course is non sustainable, subscription
software is/can be. I certainly hope we are not a place where something should
be illegal because you disagree with one company/person. How is this on
HackerNews?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
In fairness it wasn’t always like this. People used to buy a box copy of SW
for a fair price. then software shops started offering the $.99 app when app
stores got into vogue. Now they want to migrate everyone to subscription
models.

~~~
giobox
The definition of “mass market” changed hugely too from the shelved box
software era to app stores, so much so that I’m not even sure how fair it is
to compare anymore.

I’d argue that the majority of customers in the software market didn’t really
evolve with the distribution model; phones arguably just expanded distribution
to a great many people who previously weren’t software customers of any kind
or rarely made software purchases at all (beyond that which came for “free” on
their devices), many of whom appear to think paying for software in any
fashion is almost unthinkable.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
> many of whom appear to think paying for software in any fashion is almost
> unthinkable.

I still don't see how the fault lies with the customer. Look at all the
software they get to use for free or cheap because the software shops made it
available for free (with ads) or cheap ($.99 apps). This is not the customer's
fault; they were _trained_ to think this way.

------
appstorelottery
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/cirhpc/100_pr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/cirhpc/100_price_increase_for_creative_cloud_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app)

By coincidence I saw this rant on PCmaster race today. 100% price increase.

------
inamberclad
Did they ever explain why Photoshop used to be priced so much more in
Australia?

[https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/it-is-cheaper-to-
fl...](https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/it-is-cheaper-to-fly-to-us-
than-buy-adobe-software-in-australia/news-
story/158aa7824a22e1e66611c2afb5e7a61a)

~~~
viraptor
Australia tax. It's not specific to Adobe unfortunately and basically it
exists because what else are we going to do? Not buy things?

Same with games. Latest fire emblem: US: 45 USD = 65 AUD. Australia: 80 AUD.
23% more because they can.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
It's the same with poor countries. I don't play games now, but when I was
young and lived in Eastern Europe, by some miracle my mother brought me PS1
with one free game included for Christmas. The non pirate games cost about 50
dollars at the time. My middle class mother Made 250 a month...

I got the machine modded and bought few pirated games... It was impossible for
us to afford originals.

~~~
y_molodtsov
That’s different, you’re just getting the same price as the entire world.
Purchasing power is different, yes.

------
mruts
Why is he talking about subscription software being illegal while also talking
about how Adobe sucks? If he was happy with his subscription, I doubt he would
have written this post. Yet, being happy with a subscription has a little to
do on the morality of it.

Of course, no one actually thinks subscription software should be illegal.
Maybe he's making a distinction between software that can operate offline and
internet dependent software?

> I also think that paying once to OWN software should be practically a human
> right. It’s my operating system, my computer, and I don’t see why I should
> be renting part of it from some greedy little fuckwits.

It's not even your operating system, or computer. You can't do anything you
want with them. For BSD, you have to keep the copyright, for Linux, you have
to redistribute the source if you redistribute the binary, and for Windows you
can't really do anything.

If he doesn't want any new Photoshop features, I'm sure he can find an old
binary that works for free on the internet. Or he could just switch to
something else.

~~~
marcus_holmes
Happy GIMP user here. GIMP is probably the most apparent "something else".

But talking to my friends who use Photoshop, apparently the learning curve of
GIMP is too steep. It doesn't work the way Photoshop does, and so they don't
use it. I find this odd.. they'd prefer to carry on paying hundreds of cash
each year to use a buggy piece of software that they know, instead of using
this awesome piece of software for free with the minimal investment of a few
days learning. People are weird.

~~~
yardie
Yes, when it comes down to it if money is on the line a few days of downtime
can lead to thousands of dollars in lost time and work. Your friends are
probably well aware of GIMP, made the calculation dozens of times, and each
time decided it wasn’t worth the risk. It’s not just the learning curve. It’s
a whole different workflow.

I learned photoshop in middle school. And if I resumed using it today not a
lot would change. I’ve tried to learn Gimp for 2 decades. I still can’t figure
out the GUI, CLI processing was easy, I get that.

~~~
marcus_holmes
So why is the GUI so hard to learn? I mean, I'm not a huge fan of it, I still
find it tricky to do the right thing sometimes. But is it that much harder
than PS?

------
jesseschalken
> I don't like the deal company X is offering me so the government should ban
> it.

------
thisispete
Switched to Affinity last year. Never been happier with my tool selection.

