Yeah, ya know, your past posts indicate you are disinclined to listen to reasonable discussion, so I won't bother to go down your rabbit hole...next?
Reasonable discussion:
. a year ago, Adobe creates an alternative business model: subscription based. Very successful, according to their declarations (and related by you)
. The two models lived side by side beautifully for one year.
. A year later, Adobe decided to pull the rug underneath the feet of many professional freelancers, telling them, in 16 different ways, that Adobe is not interested in keeping them as paying customers.
. We heard from you two reasons:
- Reason #1: the new model stops piracy. Well, we just saw that it did not. Schewe: 0, disillusioned photographers: 1
- Reason #2: it takes too much resources to maintain two versions.
Let's debunk the #2 for a second. Yes, I am a software engineer by training (long time ago). And I learn a concept called "subroutines", or "procedures", or "objects", or "separate processes", all could be used to establish two different behaviors depending on the environment.
In practicality, the Adobe new CS7 could have had a software that, basically, would say:
- If (license = CC) then connect to servers every 30 days, and check if subscription is still running. If it is not, exit here
- If (license = Perpetual), then connect to servers and check if license is valid and the number of activations
Bottom line: it would take Adobe one software engineer for a maximum of 1 month to develop, test and validate the code. Let's say it takes Adobe 10 engineers for 10 months, just for the sake of the exercise. 100 person month = 1 to 2 million $. Max.
How many freelance professional would it take to get 1 to 2m$ selling $199 upgrades ? 10,000 . Ten thousands. That's all.
Now go on trying to explain to us why Adobe doesn't want us as customers
Adobe's decision defies logic. It even puzzled some of their own execs. There must have been endless debates, where the CEO pounded finally on the table and said: "My way or the highway". A corporation is not a democracy.
As to why you decided to defend Adobe and not your fellow photographers, that rationale escapes me.
You want a reasonable debate ? Try helping us understand why Adobe could not keep going with perpetual licenses and subscription. Too cheap ? Raise the price, and let the market decide. Too complicated to maintain two releases? This is one release for the creative suite with two separate releases for the license manager, the only thing that needs two versions. What else, other than utter snobbism toward the base that made Adobe who it is today ?
Let me close by plagiarizing a quote from a recent Apple marketeer in a keynote speech at WWDC: "Reasonable discussion my a$$ !"