Our friend Jeff did explain to us in minute details when CC was announced and CSx discountinued that Adobe had some technical limitations preventing the continuation of the perpetual licensing model in parallel with the new subscription one (I won't use the word cloud as it has little to do with the commonly accepted definition of cloud).
He explained that this was related to the way the code was built, in particular that CC would be managed only through incremental builts that were not compatible with the maintenance of 2 streams of code.
Now, what do we see? That CC is being upgraded in 2 ways:
- The incremental builds with point additions every few months (I personnally don't really bother looking at those upgrades, just no time for that and not enough encounter with material explaining the new features, not enough discussion in forums... I wonder how many % of users actually invest time in learning these new point upgrade features),
- Major builds at a frequency that seems similar to that of former CSx->CS(x+1) releases frequency.
With the existence of these major builds (CC 2014), I don't understand anymore the initial technical rationale explaining why CS7 could not have been released with a perpetual license in parallel with the new subscription model.
Besides, the confirmed availability of the CC+LR package at 9,99 a month without any condition of previous Adobe products ownership is simply a slap in the face of people like myself who have invested in Adobe's products for many years under the assumption that this would help acquire future products at a favorable pricing. Yes, it remains cheaper than the previous perpetual license deal, but the recognition of my past support to their business is gone.
The message is clear, Adobe doesn't value the investement we make in their products. Or, put in the other way, since they have made us prisonner of an eternal subscription model, they don't need to incentive us any longer to stay on board. We are stuck. In case anybody would still have had doubts about the way they look at us, this should be clear now.
Cheers,
Bernard