Bye, Bye Lightroom perpetual licenses .... No Lightroom 7

[Manoli]

In Lr6, subscription model, Adobe maintained that even if you terminated your subscription, Lr would continue to work… just NOT the Develop module.  Is that still the case ?

[john beardsworth]

Yes.

[laughingbear]

OT: At times, I feel compelled to read through the entire, and in Adobe's case that is a helluva lot, legal mambo jambo for a good laugh.  ADOBE GENERAL TERMS (2017v1) Page 9 of 12

KNOCK KNOCK.... Adobe Security, open the door!

 

13.1 Adobe may, at its expense and no more than once every 12 months, appoint its own personnel or an independent third party (or both) to verify that Customer’s use, installation, or deployment of the Products and Services (or other Adobe Technology used in conjunction with the Products and Services) comply with the terms of this Agreement.


13.2 For On-premise Software and any Distributed Code, the verification will require Customer to provide within 30 days of request (A) raw data from a software asset management tool of all On-premise Software and Distributed Code installed or deployed by or at the direction of Customer, including installation or deployment on servers owned by Customer or provided by third parties; (B) all valid purchase documentation for all On-premise Software and Distributed Code; and (C) any information reasonably requested by Adobe.

13.3 Any verification may include an onsite audit conducted at Customer’s relevant places of business upon 7 days’ prior notice, during regular business hours, and will not unreasonably interfere with Customer’s business activities.


13.4 If the verification shows that Customer, its Affiliates or third-party contractors of Customer or its Affiliates are deploying, installing or using the Products and Services (or other Adobe Technology used in conjunction with the Products and Services): (A) beyond the quantity that was legitimately licensed; or (B) in any way not permitted under this Agreement, so that additional fees apply, Customer must pay the additional license fees and any applicable related maintenance and support fees within 30 days of invoice date. If use, deployment, or installation exceeds 5% of that which is permitted under this Agreement, Customer must pay Adobe’s reasonable costs of conducting the verification, in addition to paying the additional fees.

[laughingbear]

Now, apart from "Julia Küchler", a fashion photographer I had never heard about before, who became part of the German Adobe advertisement, I wonder about other Pro's in the business, say conflict zone photographers.

Let aside, the proposed added value of features, what guarantee do I have, apart from my own Web connectivity, that I am able to access 24/7 without any interruption? I suppose there is no guarantee whatsoever or it is rather vague and full of possible liability exclusions. I stand to be corrected.

Put is this way, what added value benefit does Adobe cloud propose here compared to using my OSX Server VPN?

[john beardsworth]

Let aside, the proposed added value of features, what guarantee do I have, apart from my own Web connectivity, that I am able to access 24/7 without any interruption? I suppose there is no guarantee whatsoever or it is rather vague and full of possible liability exclusions. I stand to be corrected.

Like every contract for such services?

But there are important contractual angles to a pure LRCC/LRM/LRW workflow that I don't think are adequately covered by the general terms. It's not like when Auntie Jane the Photographer dies and you can examine her hard drive. So I am trying to get answers from Adobe on a couple of things that are implicitly part of the contract.

One is what exactly happens when you stop subscribing - what happens to your originals uploaded to their cloud? I haven't yet seen where Adobe says "you have x days' grace to download them" or "here's a tool to help you download everything that's yours."  What about any titles, captions or other metadata? Where is this stated when you sign up?

Another is what happens when the subscriber dies? Can next-of-kin gain access to his or her photos? How and for how long? It's taken us 18 months to finalise our late father's estate (even with both of us having relevant expertise), so 30 days' grace wouldn't be enough. In any case, how would the next-of-kin know that the family photos or the valuable IP is in Adobe's cloud? Is there a provision for a subscriber to record the next-of-kin so they are reminded annually? Where is this stated when you sign up?

Put is this way, what added value benefit does Adobe cloud propose here compared to using my OSX Server VPN?

It does less, but does it without you needing to know what one is.

[Rhossydd]

Another is what happens when the subscriber dies?

Issues like this become really important and intractable. However it effects a much wider range of companies than just Adobe. The problem is already hitting headlines, at least in the UK, with Apple's approach to the issue. One would have hoped that Adobe would have learnt from that bad publicity and at least had some sort of policy statement available.

It will become more complex too as cloud data becomes not just 'private data' but a financial asset. What happens if a photographers goes bankrupt and the insolvency practitioners needs to assess financial assets ?

All of this when dealing with amorphous global corporates and assets that are spread across the globe in unknown locations.

There's a lot to be said for a hard drive under the bed.

[john beardsworth]

Important, intractable, international, often overlooked.

Thanks for mentioning insolvency. When I mentioned "valuable IP" I was thinking along the same lines, but I agree that it's something that needs clarity. In fact at one stage of my accounting career I was one of those practitioners!

[IanSeward]

How long do you want them to support it without you paying a dime?

LR6 is a dead product.  Support simply means being able to install LR on your computer and have them activate it without issues.  You have paid for the product and should be able to use it for as long as you like.

For example, I am using a database from the 1990's on Win 10 FCU without problems.

Ian

[IanSeward]

Again...Adobe is NOT forcing you to store anything off of your own hard drive. They give you an option...just like you have today if you want to use some of the cloud storage that is out there for your backups. Why don't people read what Adobe is providing before lambasting them.

At this moment in time.  Remember "LR perpetual will always be available" - Tom Hogarty Product Manager LR.?  PSCS6?

Ian

[mbaginy]

In Lr6, subscription model, Adobe maintained that even if you terminated your subscription, Lr would continue to work… just NOT the Develop module.  Is that still the case ?

As I have read, both Develop and Map modules won't work following termination of a subscription.

[Jonathan Cross]

 On another website there is a report in favour of these changes. The author however quotes that his upload speed to the cloud is 1MB/s! This means 20 to 30 seconds for just one raw image. Uploading 100 images will take between half an hour and an hour. No way! It may be okay for urbanites with fast fibre, but for many of us in the country or suburbs or out on the road it is not good news.
Jonathan

[Hoggy]

At this moment in time.  Remember "LR perpetual will always be available" - Tom Hogarty Product Manager LR.?  PSCS6?

The above is relevant to what I wrote OT about 'Classic' in another thread..  So please forgive if it's a little bit out of context.  But I gots to vent in a more appropriate thread for venting.      (ETA: Many linefeeds are just refusing to go through for me on this site.)
"Sooo... Given [a current ongoing problem with AMD GPU acceleration], as well as the change to pure RansomWare, on top of the indicative/predictive(?) 'hard to find anything about Classic on Adobe's website' issue -- I'm kinda out while I consider on whether to switch to something that's not going to be RansomWare.  Adobe ****ABSOLUTELY NEEDS**** to offer an option to keep a current snapshot if deciding/needing to stop paying the ransom..  One where the edit and map modules still work, of course - say, after having subscribed for such and such a time period.. I'm sure someone smarter than me could figure out the details.  Only then, will people feel a bit more confident in sticking with Adobe at this point.  I'm currently on CC, but I think it's thoroughly despicable how they've reneged on their 'promise' of keeping a perpetual version - that was always a safety net for me until now.
The biggest reasons why I wouldn't switch to something like C1 [right now] is the horrendous catalog speed, no scene-referred HDR and panorama [DNG], no map module, and lousy support for DNG.  There are many others, of course, but those are probably the biggest for me - as being on the serious amateur/hobbyist side.  There's also ON1 raw and ACDSee, but there are similar issues with those.  It's tough deciding, when all one's past images are already edited in the Adobe non-destructive engine instructions - of course the same could be said if I was using one of the others.
<sigh> They really NEED to make it possible to keep a current snapshot if they're going to switch to pure unadulterated RansomWare..  Again, with ALL the working features of a perpetual version.
"

[john beardsworth]

At this moment in time.  Remember "LR perpetual will always be available" - Tom Hogarty Product Manager LR.?  PSCS6?

Not true - unless you can link to where that statement was made. Prove it, if you can.

See what he actually wrote here : "Future versions of Lightroom will be made available via traditional perpetual licenses indefinitely."

[Alan Goldhammer]

On another website there is a report in favour of these changes. The author however quotes that his upload speed to the cloud is 1MB/s! This means 20 to 30 seconds for just one raw image. Uploading 100 images will take between half an hour and an hour. No way! It may be okay for urbanites with fast fibre, but for many of us in the country or suburbs or out on the road it is not good news.
Jonathan

I commented on this earlier.  I have a good fiber optic Internet connection but remember that when one does a speed test it's really a synthetic number and not what the real speed is.  I remember doing my first cloud back up about five years ago.  I had about 200MB of data to up load and it took about six full working days to get it uploaded.  Now that connection was slower by about a factor of three than what I currently have.  The cloud service back up will work for those who have real fast service but that comes with a big price tag and you need to figure that into the price going forward.  Right now I get 30Mb/sec upload speed for about $40/month.  If I move to the Adobe cloud LR, my real costs become about $60/month when I include the Internet provider fee.  This is perhaps OK if one can write this off on taxes as a business expense.

I'll leave aside the security issues as those can be dealt with through encryption of your images assuming Adobe allows that feature (Amazon Simple Storage doesn't care if things are encrypted or not, that is up to the application one is using for upload to choose).

Finally, one LuLa member said "How long to you want them to support it without spending a dime?"  I already responded that I was willing to pay an upgrade fee for a new stand alone version of LR that offered new tools.  the only support for legacy LR that is really needed is for new cameras and I doubt that is a big engineering feat for Adobe to accomplish.

[hogloff]

At this moment in time.  Remember "LR perpetual will always be available" - Tom Hogarty Product Manager LR.?  PSCS6?

Ian

Yeh...and the sky is really falling. What guarantee do you have any other software will be supported forever? None...so enough of the chicken little attitude.

[pegelli]

Yeh...and the sky is really falling. What guarantee do you have any other software will be supported forever? None...so enough of the chicken little attitude.

It doesn't have to be supported, as long as you can run it (without ongoing monthly fees) it's fine by me.
I would have liked a perpetual LR7, but for the time being a running (but unsupported after YE 2017) perpetual LR6 will do fine.

And calling out Adobe officials on spreading deceiving information has nothing to do with "chicken little", and neither has defending them "no matter what".
There's no need to be derogatory to people you don't agree with, simply disagreeing will do fine. 

[jrsforums]

Well John, snotty reply aside, I did read Mr. Hogarty's blog post. It was one of the first sources I checked after reading announcements in the blogosphere. Per the official, Adobe sanctioned blog Lightroom CC is "Cloud Based—Everything you do in Lightroom CC is synced to the cloud. This means that you can access and work with your photos from any device (including multiple computers), and can easily share photos with others. All of your photos and all of the work that you do with them will be automatically backed up all the time."

Unless you have an insight to Adobe's definition of the words Everything, any, and  "all the time" that differ from standard dictionary usage, my read is that Lightroom CC backs up everything to the cloud. All the time.

What little documentation is included in Lightroom CC makes the explicit point that LR is now a cloud-native application. The source image now lives on an Adobe server, with copies distributed to connected devices. File sizes are altered depending on available local storage. If you choose, you can keep full sized versions on a local computer. Cloud uploads ... those ain't optional. I also attempted further due diligence by reading Adobe's site, but as I mentioned above, most of the LR FAQs point to nonexistent pages.

Adobe has accomplished quite a feat. They made LR CC unusable for many people who pay the bills through their images. A combination of unknown security risks, the impossibility of uploading a full shoot of images through an internet connection before the next shoot begins (again, I'm assuming photography is your business rather than just a weekend hobby), and the sheer inefficiency of placing all those images in the cloud is baffling.

We actually do store huge amounts of images in the cloud as it provides redundant backups in case of disaster. If working remotely, pulling files from AWS can also be faster than copying them from our in-house storage. Storage costs are in line with what Adobe charges for LR cloud with the important differences that (1) we only store images that are useful - the vast majority are culled first, and (2) all images are encrypted on before they leave our computers so even if Amazon gets hacked all the bad guy will have are files with 256 random character names that are unreadable.

If your interest in photography is editing your happy snaps then Lightroom CC is a reasonable idea. Good for you. That appears to be where Adobe gauges the market to be and I assume they are correct. That does not mean that a working photographer will feel the same excitement about the direction LR has gone in his or her fizzy bits.

I was a bit curt (sorry).  However, what I said still seems to be true.

Did you read Hogarty’s second post?  What about Laura Shoe’s or The Lightroom Queen posts on announcement and comparison between LR CC and LR Classic.  Also, Julianne Kost’s YouTube video? 

All these would info that what CC is, and is not, and that Classic is, essentially, the Lightroom we have today.

It appears you only installed and tested the new CC.  Therefore your comments are not a surprise.

[jrsforums]

It doesn't have to be supported, as long as you can run it (without ongoing monthly fees) it's fine by me.
I would have liked a perpetual LR7, but for the time being a running (but unsupported after YE 2017) perpetual LR6 will do fine.

And calling out Adobe officials on spreading deceiving information has nothing to do with "chicken little", and neither has defending them "no matter what".
There's no need to be derogatory to people you don't agree with, simply disagreeing will do fine.

Have you considered, that at the time, the Adobe official (and board, etc) really had no idea what the future decision on perpetual would be?

Have you ever had a service or product which you offered and customers were buying and for any reason had to stop in and had disappointed customers.

When licensing started, I am sure no one really knew how it would succeed.  Many here were never going to use it.  Some did, some didn’t.

Those who stayed with LR6 essentially stopped being customers of Adobe.  Many, as stated, tried other offerings.  Who knows what Adobe’s market analysis showed of the market for “LR7” vs not offering and how it affected the bottom line vs the other and new offering?  Particularly as the “LRx” timeline had extend quite a bit from what had been ~18 months, which significantly changes the economics.

[pegelli]

Have you considered, that at the time, the Adobe official (and board, etc) really had no idea what the future decision on perpetual would be?

Of course I have considered that and it's probably even what happened. However if you haven't got anything to say (because you don't know) don't say it

Have you ever had a service or product which you offered and customers were buying and for any reason had to stop in and had disappointed customers.

Not in the sense you are asking the question. Yes in a sense that there were unavailabilities of product based on things beyond our control (eg. raw material unavailability/plant outages/weather events impacting production or logistics), but we never decided to stop producing/selling something because selling the same thing another way (eg. leasing it) or via a different channel made us more money. However the business I worked in was company to company, not company to consumers directly.

When licensing started, I am sure no one really knew how it would succeed.  Many here were never going to use it.  Some did, some didn’t.

Those who stayed with LR6 essentially stopped being customers of Adobe.  Many, as stated, tried other offerings.  Who knows what Adobe’s market analysis showed of the market for “LR7” vs not offering and how it affected the bottom line vs the other and new offering?  Particularly as the “LRx” timeline had extend quite a bit from what had been ~18 months, which significantly changes the economics.

I'm sure many (incl. me) would have stayed happy customers of Adobe had they offered a LR7 perpetual licence. I personally would even have accepted a (reasonable) price hike over their historic upgrade price of 75 €. By the way, I still have licences with Adobe for LR6 (and earlier) and CS3 (and earlier). In those licence terms there's obligations on both parties, so even if I don't buy one of their products today (or subscribe to a service) I still am a customer of them.

[Rhossydd]

Have you ever had a service or product which you offered and customers were buying and for any reason had to stop

They haven't had to stop producing it, they've chosen to stop producing it.

Those who stayed with LR6 essentially stopped being customers of Adobe.

No, they still own licences and I'm sure most would be very happy to keep being customers and buying upgrades as they have in the past.