19
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Adobe warns customers of potential legal action for using older versions of Creative Cloud apps
Link information
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- Authors
- Juli Clover, Joe Rossignol, Sami Fathi
- Published
- May 13 2019
- Word count
- 411 words
The comments in that article seem to suggest that the subscription model is to blame, but I'd argue it's Adobe's implementation of it. A subscription model for such expensive software greatly lowers the bar of entry for new designers. Before CC you had to drop a couple hundred dollars on each piece of software you needed. Now it's a much more affordable monthly fee.
A good example of a company doing it correctly is Jetbrains. They're basically the developer equivalent of Adobe in that they provide a lot of popular IDE software for programmers. But their pricing model is fantastic. They have a perpetual fallback licensing system where if you subscribe for 12 months straight or pay for a year ahead of time, you retain ownership of that year's software version. And if you stay subscribed, each year you get a decent discount each year up to year 3. For example, year 1 of phpStorm is $89, but year 3 and beyond is only $53, so it's a solid drop in price.
I wonder if there are ideological reasons for doing things that way, or they think/calculate that it's more profitable in the long run.
For a lot of subscription services, the prices actually go up after you've demonstrated loyalty for x amount of time after an introductory cheaper period to get you hooked.
I get the opposing pressure here since after a year you own the software. Why continue subscribing when you've got that previous version? Either the newer versions have to get better pretty fast, ,or there's no reason to continue paying.
It really depends on the programming language you're writing code for. Some languages advance slowly, so sticking around on an older IDE version is fine. Some are cutting edge and the IDE needs to be as well. Others sit somewhere in the middle.
In terms of why their licensing is so generous, I think it's because they have an uphill battle with a ton of competition. Adobe on the other hand basically holds a monopoly on professional graphic design software. There are alternatives (FOSS ones, even), but if you're working professionally, with other designers, or just want to avoid a major headache, you're using Adobe's software. People can just use FOSS alternatives, but its rare and the second you have to interact with someone that uses or expects an adobe file format, you've got a headache to deal with.
But with programming there are generally no proprietary filetypes, formats, etc. It's all just text that can be written in just about any text editor out there. That means there are a ton of free options out there, forcing the paid software guys to keep their prices low and their subscriptions generous.
That's the difference between B2C and B2B. Because Cs are poorly informed, and in the aggregate are a bunch of irrational self-maligning retards, whereas Bs in the aggregate analyse the crap out of purchasing decisions by comparison and vendor lock-in is a powerful thing.
With Jetbrains they really do.
I purchased CS5 when I made my living as an independent graphic designer. It was already years old before I switched to another line of work, but I was nowhere near needing to upgrade. I mean did anything really fundamental or unmissable improve/get introduced after the older CS versions?
Anyway, I'm glad I still have those. Comes in handy every so often to be able to create something in Illustrator or InDesign.