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Ask Slashdot: What Is Your View On Forced Subscription-Only Software?
dryriver writes: All used to be well in the world of Digital Content Creation (DCC) until two very major DCC software makers -- Adobe and Autodesk -- decided to force a monthly subscription model on pretty much every software package they make to please Wall Street investors. Important 2D and 3D DCC software like Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, InDesign, 3DMax, Maya, and Mudbox is now only available to "rent" from these companies. You simply cannot buy a perpetual license or boxed copy for this software at all anymore, and what makes matters worse is that if you stop paying your subscription, the software locks itself down, leaving you unable to open even old files you created with the software for later review. Also annoying is that subscription software constantly performs "license validity" checks over the internet (subscription software cannot be run offline for any great length of time, or on an air-gapped PC) and the software is increasingly tied into various cloud services these companies have set up. The DCC companies want you to save your -- potentially confidential -- project files on their servers, not on your own hard disk.
There are millions of DCC professionals around the world who'd love to be able to buy a normal, perpetual, offline-use capable license for these software tools. That is no longer possible. Adobe and Autodesk no longer provide that. What is your view on this "forced subscription" model? What would happen if all the major commercial software developers forced this model on everyone simultaneously? What if the whole idea of being able to "purchase" a perpetual license for ANY commercial software went away completely, and it was subscription only from that point on?
There are millions of DCC professionals around the world who'd love to be able to buy a normal, perpetual, offline-use capable license for these software tools. That is no longer possible. Adobe and Autodesk no longer provide that. What is your view on this "forced subscription" model? What would happen if all the major commercial software developers forced this model on everyone simultaneously? What if the whole idea of being able to "purchase" a perpetual license for ANY commercial software went away completely, and it was subscription only from that point on?
I can guess how this is going to go ./ Pretty much everyone will be fully supportive.
"Is Autodesk on the right course?" "Is Autodesk acting like a leader of an industry, seeking to create new markets and broaden the use of its products?" Ah John Walker, you asked questions, but not about this. https://www.fourmilab.ch/autof...
SolidWorks is close to that model now as well.
Sage accounting has a perpetual / offline license available, but you can't buy it from them - you have to go through a reseller.
It brings up a question I always ask: Who owns your data?
If you have to keep paying someone in order to access your designs, then you don't really own your data, they do.
- The Sigless Wonder
I'm not a fan of the sub model; I use several of the Adobe apps, so the $50/month seems like a steal when you consider the Suite used to cost in the thousands of dollars. But I'd still rather pay up once and be able to keep using the software as much as I wanted.
Jason Van Patten
If a had a nose,
Iâ(TM)d gladly pay through it, twice.
But my nose expired.
I personally don't like it but it's one of the more surefire ways of reducing piracy whilst kicking your actual customers in the wallet to make up for any perceived piracy losses.
As soon as they announced the newest release (2018) was subscription based, I went looking for alternatives (OSS and perpetual license). Already thought the last version was slow and full of feature bloat, but the move to require annual payment for said pleasure was the last straw.
Adobe has a stranglehold on that market, and they can pretty much do whatever they want. They realized that people weren't bothering to buy new versions, and as such their revenue was threatened, so they changed course to a subscription, to guarantee future revenue, unless a competitor came in. No competitors in sight and given the state of software today, it is highly unlikely that another vendor would choose a non-subscription path. I get everything I want out of GIMP personally, so I'm not too personally invested in that per se, but it does serve as an inspiration to all sorts of software vendors as a 'I can't make customers pay for new function, and I can't branch into new markets competently, so I can make them rent the same old software to get revenue and as a bonus, I don't have to work as hard to innovate'.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This is just an extreme case of vendor lock-in, which has been a known risk of using proprietary software for decades. Vendor lock-in was one of the primary motivators for the free software movement.
Frankly, I do think proprietary software such as MS Office, PhotoShop, AutoCAD, etc. often offers a better user experience than free and open-source (FOSS) alternatives. I have been willing to bottle my FOSS sympathies and shell out cash for productivity software for a long time for that reason. When the UX is better, that's worth paying for.
Once the vendor starts blocking me from access to my own intellectual property, that's a deal-breaker. First it's a moral outrage. Second, for people who won't factor morals into their business decisions, it's an extreme and unacceptable business risk. Now that we have a word for "ransomware," we can call this subscription model what it is.
I know people will say "Adobe will never kill PhotoShop." Never is very long time. People used to say General Motors would never go bankrupt, or Lotus would never kill Lotus 1-2-3.
No deal. Even if the subscription were "free." I'm looking at you, Google.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
My company is in the architectural visualisation sector, so that means we are utterly dependant on Autodesk AND Adobe software. Lucky us! The subscription system has it's pros and cons. Pros are that you get the latest and greatest technologies as soon as they become available (and bugs ofc). Cons is you are totally at their mercy, and in certain cases we pay much more than we used to. To be honest, I'm not so bothered about Adobe, their software is still cheap, as far as I'm concerned, and Photoshop is one of the most refined and evolved tools I've ever used (been using it professionally since v2.0). As for Autodesk, they are total price-gouging bastards. The money we have to spend - and make no bones about it, we HAVE to spend - on 3DS Max is outrageous. If there was a realistic alternative, we'd move in a flash. Except that would probably be owned by Autodesk too.
As a user of Blender, I am fine with Autodesk's destructive attitudes. I've noticed that some animation studios are now providing both money to the Blender Institute and software coders to help it's development. It may still feel like a drop in the bucket but Blender is capable to do many of the tasks needed out there already.
Now I know that won't cover all aspects but maybe other programs such as FreeCAD will get a boost from these vendor lock in tactics.
If Gimp could speed up their development, people might see a benefit to replace Photoshop in businesses too but I might be asking too much here.
One of my friends is a top level graphic designer. He has simply stayed with a bought-and-paid-for version of PhotoShop...CS5, I believe. There is literally nothing he can't do with it.
His comment about Adobe's attempt to force him to rent the new version and effectively put his business under their control was simple and direct. He said (and yes, this is a quote), "Adobe can go fuck itself."
I've done photography at the professional level and use Lightroom (mostly) and CS2 (for occasions when I have to do serious retouching). This was never an issue for me, because I don't need the newest bells and whistles for what is now more a hobby than a profession.
I echo my friend's sentiments, though. I will never put myself into a situation where Adobe might be able to forbid me from having access to my own work. I can't imagine what kind of idiot would do so.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
When they saw that they were going to be forced into extortionware like this, they essentially told Adobe to fuck the hell off.
Sure, very well-to-do companies can afford perpetual payments.
But smaller creators who still need access scrimp and save and simply buy a copy of CS5 or CS6 when they can find it.
Sure, up front it's more. But ammortize it out over time.
CS6 was released in mid-2011. Coming up on 7 years here.
It was discontinued in late 2013.
Even if it was $1000 (which it wasn't) at inception, that's basically be just under $12/month ownership cost at this point.
Or you could have been spending $20/month for Photoshop CC since mid 2013 (about $1200).
Hell, the bastards don't even cut you any kind of financial break for prepaying for a year!
And god help you if you want to pay month-to-month instead of an annual contract that's paid monthly. Tack an extra $10/month on!
Fuck extortionware.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's very simple, really. Richard Stallman was right, and saw this coming over 30 years ago. It's better to use inferior Free software than it is to use the world's best non-Free software. In some cases, it's even better to resort to pencil and paper than to rely upon non-Free software. I fought against this notion for years, but it finally clicked for me about 20 years ago when all the proprietary software I relied upon was pulled out from under me.
I could write a very long treatise as to why Free software is always a better choice than non-Free software. One major point is that you will learn how to make Free software work for you, even when it has missing features, and will then be free of the near absolute power wielded against you by large corporate interests which do not dovetail with your own.
I'm much more restrictive about spending money on a monthly basis compared to one-time purchases. So for me personally they lose sales. I would have no problem purchasing a license at irregular intervals for Adobe Lightroom and maybe also Photoshop, but I will not pay for a subscription
The thought of it costing money every month just bugs me. And it's easy to calculate exactly how much it will end up costing
Take 25 years of Lightroom and Photoshop as an example.
$10 * 12 months * 25 years = $3000
But Isuspect this works quite well for those who have to use their products.
If at all possible, avoid it.
But if as a professional you rely on these tools, well that's just another overhead.
And fair enough, if these companies have run out of good features and now they just want rent.
I suppose they could take it a step further and start demanding a percentage of your profits...
It brings up a question I always ask: Who owns your data?
THAT is exactly the key question. It's the reason I refuse to use Lightroom to manage my photos. I'm not about to tie myself in perpetuity to another company and effectively hand over control of my data to them. While I'm not saying it's always wrong to make that choice it's a choice one should make with extreme caution. It would be one thing if the software continued to work if you stopped paying the subscription and you just stopped getting upgrades. But to disable the software and effectively deny you access to your data if you stop paying for the subscription is just shady as it gets to my mind.
Since there is no real limit on what might be required to get access to your data in the future, you're really writing a blank cheque for the future entrusting your data in such a contract.
It's foolish but so many do it. Try to point it out and you're labelled a conspiracy theorist.
Times may have changed but how short our memories? I remember getting shafted by this so many times in previous decades.
Own your data in a format you have control of or be prepared to lose it.
Things I've lost in the past:
- all my facebook contacts
- my financial privacy
- CAD files
I'm sure people have lost more when even money wasn't enough to rescue the data.
A blog I run for the wealth
In 2006 I decided I was fed up with the paying upgrades, and decided to move to linux and OS alternatives.
I run a boardgame publishing business, and need software to edit bitmap and vector images, video, and to make 3D modelling for 3D animated videos as well as for parts design. I also need desktop publishing.
Had I continued to use proprietary softwrae, i'd be using photoshop, illustrator, indesign, maya, solidworks and adobe premiere.
Instead I took the time to learn different tools, and use Inkscape, Krita, Gimp, Blender, freecad, Scribus, and KDEnlive.
Yes, the interfaces are not always as polished, and it takes time to learn. but it's stable, does the job, it's free, and I can still go back to other free or proprietary software when I'm not satisfied.
A few years ago when adobe started to go the subscription route I expected to see more people switch to free software. But the thins is : once you are used to something, it takes some effort to move to something else. It's not a matter of capacity of the software or even ease of use, it's a matter of being willing to make an effort to learn new ways, and to change.
So I say you want comfort and no change, well cough up. this has a price, you choose proprietary vendors, so pay what they ask and live with it.
The alternatives are free and available, but they require an actual effort on the user's end.
I personally don't like it but it's one of the more surefire ways of reducing piracy whilst kicking your actual customers in the wallet to make up for any perceived piracy losses.
In my case it reduces piracy by keeping me from using their products at all. I'm not about to hand over control of my data to a company just so they can pad their bottom line to Wall Street. Sadly I'd actually pay for some of their products but they refuse to license them to me under terms I'm willing to accept.
Software companies should not be allowed to hold your creative work at ransom.
A subscription model in itself is not a problem. But companies that want to use this model should be forced to provide full specifications of their data model, so that you are able to take your business elsewhere whenever you want to.
Back in the day Word Perfect* used to be *the* office software. But then another program came along along and supplanted it. The same thing can happen again to things like Photoshop and Autocad. But in fact there are already non-subscription based programs that do the majority of what most users need in a package. I used to have an old copy of Photoshop .. but I couldn't get it running properly on the latest macOS. So instead I switched to Affinity Photo (I prefer it over the Gimp). A lot cheaper than Photoshop and does all that I need plus more.
*I was amazed to see that Word Perfect is still lumbering along. I had no idea. Also Word Perfect supplanted things like Wordstar (of which I also have fond memories of running under CP/M)
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It doesn't matter if you wanted a smart TV or not, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted a headphone jack or not, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted to pay a one-time cost, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted a removable battery, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted A la carte, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
Bottom line is consumer opinion no longer matters. And don't give me that Vote with your Wallet crap. That's as dead as the concept of competition. The mega-corps could care less about the 5% of you that would actually stand up and "vote". The other 95% of mindless consumers just stand in line and beg for more product regardless of price. And Greed is infectious, which is exactly why we are seeing more SaaS mandates, not less. Shareholders and investors demand it.
And it's been this way for a long time now, so you might as well get used to it. Your entire life will be subscription-based 30 years from now.
I recall WriteNow 4.0, which was a willing companion to word smithery. At some point I ended up with Word, which just sucks as it over thinks everything you do. I don't want to change the paragraph style and fonts if I backspace too many times, don't want to auto number paragraphs, etc. I'm using Pages now, and only convert to Word if the client needs it. I've so far avoided the "pay us 365 days" model. I can't imagine how it is if you have formats you can't convert easily...
The worst part is none of this will stop piracy. The software can be cracked to disable/fool the periodic authentication and proxy servers can be set up to emulate the cloud services for saving files.
Only businesses that need to stay legit will be affected by this. If there is a network outage or bottleneck they will be shut down. If they let their subscription lapse they will be shut down. If they refuse to upgrade for too long, they will eventually lose the ability to collaborate with other groups as new features are added that are not backwards compatible.
It's tantamount to extortion for anyone who wants or needs to stay legit, but really only an annoyance for people who are willing and able to pirate.
=Smidge=
That's odd. My pirated copies work just fine. No problems here.
I think that subscriptions, like micropayments, are evil and ruining the industry by blatant money grabbing and extortion. That said it is easy to see why the companies inflicting this are doing it, it makes them lots of cash.
So my question to all of you who dislike this state of affairs, what are you doing about it? Have you contributed time or money to open source alternatives? Have you purchased a commercial alternative? Are you sitting on your ass bemoaning the state of affairs while enabling it?
-Charlie
For decades, software companies have been treating our permanent purchases of software as if they were rentals. The conditions of 'purchase' were frankly more like rentals than anything else.
Which was unfair, as they were priced as purchases.
Now at least, they are being honest about it. They want to rent, then they can't charge a purchase price for it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
There is no "forced".
Between the Affinity Suite, Corel Draw, FOSS alternatives and roughly 10 bazillion 3D toolkits including Houdini, Lightwave, Cinema and Blender, there is absolutely nothing forcing anyone to use the big crappy two, Adobe and Autodesk.
Don't use Adobe or Autodesk. It's that simple. ... Experts have known this for years.
Glad I could help.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I love photoshop, lightroom and other Adobe products. However, at this point, I stopped at CS6 for the Adobe suite of tools.
I have LR5, and may try to go to LR6 while I believe I still can to get that last perpetual license, but that's it.
While Adobe has put out "some" upgrades and new features over these past few years of Creative Cloud, I frankly haven't found anything there to be groundbreaking, that I cannot work without. IMHO, the adage that if they don't have incentive to innovate (due to steady income stream no matter what) they won't. And I don't see that they have really.
ON the other hand, it may be that things like Photoshop and Designer, AI, etc...have pretty much for the most part hit the wall on what you can do....and there isn't much room left for improvement for completely NEW features.
If that's the case, then if nothing else, Adobe should try going in and rewriting the engines behind the scenes, but you don't see that either.
One nice thing about the Adobe CC rental thing is, it has spurred on other companies to try to fill that void, and there are a number of them that are.
So far as a PS replacement, I'm enjoying Affinity Photo . It is damned fast, their engine work blows Adobe away. And for functionality, well, I'd say it is about 98-99% there. My only gripe is they need to emulate PS in that when you have the brush tool, you need to have the keyboard command to allow quick sampling of colors with the brush on the image. Other than that, the healing, cloning and content aware tools are JUST as good as Adobes from what I've seen so far. And I think with some extra time, it may equal or surpass PS. It is reasonably priced for a perpetual license, and they've been doing a LOT of updates for free since I bought it a couple years ago.
Affinity has a designer app and I belive a Publisher app coming out....windows and mac.
For a lightroom replacement, I'm playing with On1 RAW ...it is very good so far, I do miss some of the LR cataloging, but On1 appears to be adding those options. I like that it has in the RAW development area, simple and luminosity masking...something you have to drop out of raw imaging processing from LR and got to PS for on the Adobe side.. And again...very quick and responsive engine.
And for video...well, the free version of Black magic's Davinci Resolve ....well known and respected for its color grading capabilities, now has a very respectable e NLE inside, and they're adding some impressing sound tools too. Premier? Well....it has competition. I also like FCPX too, but since it is so different and Mac only, I won't put that one up there right now.
Adobe After Effects? Well, now I love me some AE. I also have some 3rd party filters for AE from Red Giant and Video Copilot I enjoy using....so far, that one is the hardest to find a replacement for, but it appears that Blackmagic Fusion may be a real contender there.
So, there are alternatives....may take a little retraining, but then again, not that much. The PS alternatives often have pretty much the same layout of tools and keyboard shortcuts. A NLE for the most part is a NLE with some minor differences...
So, if nothing else, with Adobe going rental, it has put forth incentive for other companies to come along and truly compete.
So far, I'm voting with my wallet....I encourage anyone that can to also do so.
And I do this through a business....so, those that think the rental model is great for a business write off......I'd rather write off purchases of something the company owns, and doesn't go vapor when you stop rent payment.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Mmmm, subscriptions to software. They're definitely the future. Look for this to become more of a thing as time goes on. I personally don't like it, but I do see the benefits of this model. We have to admit there are some boons to the subscription model we might not readily see.
The biggest one is going to be support. If a company is making you pay every month to use their stuff, they better be supporting it. The entire model sustains a decent support team assuming the company is willing to shovel some of their profits into it. Also, the support part includes continuous updates. See Microsoft Windows 10 for an example of how this looks.
Also updates, yep, you never have to pay a large one-time licensing fee, and your subscription includes updates, for as long as you keep paying. Never have to worry about buying the next version at a large one-time licensing fee.
But then the cons: You're married to this company, dependent on them to make a living. Not sure I'm comfortable with that. Offline usage. I imagine a lot of subscription models are going to have to provide for more security conscious customers, like DoD or three-letter-agencies whom can't have stuff always connected. So there will definitely be stipulations for that, but it's still annoying. Hopefully they'll give a fairly decent amount of 'offline usage' before the license gets angry with you. Access to your files after subscription ends.. yeah, that's not good, companies definitely need to provide a read-only mode of their software so you can still get at your stuff, just can't modify it anymore until you resubscribe.
Final thoughts: It definitely has a place. It's not all evil. It's not ideal for all situations and I do wish companies would offer both options. If I want to buy a perpetual today's latest and greatest version of doffusofficecadauto, I should be able to do that, and never get updates ever, until I buy a new version or subscribe. For some situations it's really ideal and actually a boon. It does sort of force companies to stand behind their product for as long as you're subscribed to it.
Long term I worry, computer companies of all shapes, sizes and flavors come and go at a breakneck speed. I do worry about people losing work trapped in defunct subscription software. At the end of the day, you have to decide which works for you. For those of us who are bitching we can't get perpetual licenses anymore.. well, there's a market opening for someone ambitious. Fill that niche?
I just quit giving Adobe my money. I own the most recent non-sub version of Photoshop, and that'll do fine for whatever I need to use Photoshop for in the future, and to work with what I have already used Photoshop for.
My position - both as a user and a developer - is that I am quite happy to buy software, including buying upgrades; I absolutely refuse to steal software; and under no circumstances will I rent software: I think the entire rent/subscribe model is profoundly toxic to the end user.
The general class of problem is that if I produce a document (such as a .psd) with software X, and then X stops working because [I can't afford to continue to pay || the company is out of business || the company is no longer supporting it || any other non-remediable reason] then my document may become frozen and/or impossible to access, depending on just how the version of the software I finally ended up with handles such things, something you can't really predict because these companies change their policies from time to time.
I can't, in good conscience, support the model / mindset that embodies the potential for such problems. I certainly won't create software that imposes such a thing on my end users.
You want to sell me software, fine, let's do that. You want to rent/subscribe it to me, you can toddle right the hell off without my money.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
cayenne8 revealed:
So far, I'm voting with my wallet....I encourage anyone that can to also do so.
Avid Corporation's Pro Tools is the standard DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) in the recording industry. Every professional recording studio uses it, because their customers demand that they do so.
Avid decided more than a decade ago that renting, rather than selling, recording software would be their model - and, like the Adobe examples listed in TFS - they've stuck with it ever since. And their license fees are not cheap. Like, at all. To frost the feces cake, most major makers of audio processing plug-ins have adopted the same strategy. All of which, naturally, makes running a commercial recording studio a hideously expensive business, given how much it costs to design and build one, and how much the necessary hardware (professional-quality microphones, for instance, start at around $1,200 and go way up from there) adds to the start-up expense.
That's why, for my home studio, I chose to go with Reaper, instead. Justin Frankel, the lead developer of the seminal WinAmp music player founded the company that makes it after AOL bought (and promptly forgot about) WinAmp from him for gazillions of dollars. He's publicly stated that the price of Reaper ($60 for private use) is purposely set low to make it affordable for everyone, since he's already rich enough to afford not to gouge his customers - so the cost is just high enough to pay the development team to keep working on the product.
Reaper kicks ass. It's just as capable a product as Pro Tools - and, once you buy it, it's yours. You get no-cost upgrades through the entire major version you bought. And the next one, as well. It's compatible with all the major plug-in formats, and it comes bundled with a whole bunch of them (including VSTi's) at no additional charge. It's WAY more configurable than Pro Tools, it uses very little RAM, comparatively speaking, and it's scriptable up the wazoo.
Oh, and there's a Linux version, as well.
I didn't mean this post to be a Slashvertisment, but I guess it turned into one. Sorry about that. See, my point is that there's a pro-quality alternative to what is practically a software monopoly in the audio recording world, too. And it doesn't require you to compromise on functionality or power.
Fuck rent-seeking. And fuck rent-seekers ...
(Posted as AC only to keep from undoing prior upmods in this thread.)
--
Check out my novel ...
I'm slumming it with CS2 for the same reason. I literally used Illustrator for the first time in 3 years this past week, and it will likely be another 3 years before I need it again. I don't use it for professional work, just personal projects, so the subscription model is a massive waste of money for me, and frankly it's easier to not have to learn all the new features and changes every time I want to do some tiny little illustration. I really wish they had a hobbyist version that was super cheap and only had core features, but that seems to be the opposite of what adobe is.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
... should ask, "What have I done for Open Source Software, lately?"
I'm a little surprised this is even an article on /.
It was exactly this kind of scenario and thought processed that caused the creation of the GNU foundation and FOSS licensing model. Doesn't most everyone here know that?
https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manife...
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
I feel fortunate that two software productsI rely on (first for my own projects, now professionally), Corel Suite (Draw, Paint) and Cakewalk Sonar are still available as regular purchased projects. They pretty much both have feature parity with the "big" tools, and really only suffer from not being "the standard that everyone uses." If you're able and willing to move away from that standard, there ARE good choices available.
For some commercial entities, I understand that's not a realistic option. When you hire experienced industry professional, it's likely they already know and are expecting to use Pro Tools or Photoshop. It would probably cost much more to retrain people, and you'd lose compatibility with a large amount of your history, which, because you rent your software, you could no longer access.
I own a copy of Adobe Audition for audio mixing, but I left it at the version just before everything went to a rental model. If I ever find a product as capable as Audition, I'll be switching, but there's very little competition in that space, unfortunately.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
That might work for Adobe. But people who use Autodesk products are pretty much screwed. Particularly if they have to submit datasets for permitting processes. Most building departments don't know how to handle anything else. And local building departments don't want to handle local storage for construction documents. Hence 'The Cloud'. And if you need to electronically sign your submitted drawings, that will be done through AutoCAD's built-in function which is undoubtedly tied to your serial number or software lease identity.
Back when my city's building department was discussing processes for electronic signing of permit submittals, their IT 'experts' had no clue that any stand-alone methods or products even existed. They had been trained by Autodesk to believe that only the built-in function would be suitable.
Have gnu, will travel.
I can see this moving from annual subscriptions, to monthly, to daily, to hourly.
That's true already. We have hourly rates at work for eg. Arcgis and Mapinfo. They something like €1.5 per hour.
" That's odd. My pirated copies work just fine. No problems here. "
I just can't bring myself to trust pirated software anymore. I got burned too many times during my Amiga days with all sorts of evil shit that came hidden / bundled with the Yarr Matey versions.
I don't really care for the subscription model, but I use Adobe's software too much to avoid it.
I greatly dislike the fact that Adobe keeps open / talking connections back to their servers at all times. Even more annoying that it's encrypted so I can't see what is going out. I let it talk initially, then a script kills the active processes for the remainder of the session.
I have experimented with Photoshop alternatives, but I find their performance is seriously lacking ( Wacom Mobile Studio Pro platform ) in comparison.
Capture One Pro ( v11 is latest ) works very well for a Lightroom replacement though I don't typically shoot 5k shots that I then have to sort through.
Now, Autodesk can just kiss my ass on their Maya / Max subscription systems. ( I like how they bought and then discontinued Softimage just so they could remove any potential competitors )
Last I checked, they were around the $1500 / year mark ( for a subscription ) and that price is why I got serious about Blender.
1. When companies make a good, useful product, customers will buy it.
2. When investors dictate that they must have a particular financial product, quality and features go to hell.
3. I weaned myself off Adobe several years ago, when it was clear they were MORE interested in income than in CUSTOMER satisfaction. When they stopped providing any meaningful "Customer Service."
4. I have, so far, been steadfast in my decision to only buy from companies who are focused on CUSTOMER satisfaction, rather than short-term greed.
Adobe is dead to me. Ghostscript has so many useful front-ends that make it viable in many environments (e.g., producing a PDF from a webpage, which most products do by making "snapshots" of the text). Tools like Bullzip (the browser add-in relying on Ghostscript) produces near-perfect PDF files that can be imported into good text editors for annotation, amendment and incremental improvement.
These days your coffee pot uses OpenSSL. Your dildo probably uses OpenSSL. My lightbulbs just updated their firmware again. Every dumb widget is now "smart" and they all rely on OSS software that they never wrote and don't care how it works.
That may all be true, but I think it reflects more the insanity of connecting everything and depending on so many things by default than any inherent need to be constantly updating software. Obviously anything that actually needs connectivity will also have security and privacy implications to consider, but with many of these things "Well don't make it connected, then!" is a perfectly sensible response.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I absolutely loathe the concept of software being subscription-only in this fashion. I purchased Photoshop and Lightroom as stand-alone products as one-off expenses. I upgraded them the same way... so I have perpetual licenses. I haven't moved on to the "cloud" based products, because if I decide to stop paying, or lose the ability to pay, a subscription, I want my software to still work. If there was desktop colour control in Linux, and it was supported well in The GIMP, that's probably what I would use. Darktable isn't ready for prime-time as a Lightroom replacement, but down the road, hopefully it will be... and good colour control will get added to X.
I simply stopped buying then next version of Photoshop, using the old version and slowly learning GIMP, problem solved.
Forgot to add the third factor: File formats. If the hardware and OS/API changes won't get you, the file format changes will. Most people have to SHARE files with the rest of the world. The shift from .DOC and .XLS to .DOCX and .XLSX forced a lot of MS Office upgrades on people even if they were perfectly happy with older copies of Office. As long as the file formats are also controlled by these same entities that want constant upgrades, most of the market will be forced to upgrades anyways. Hence the importance of not letting proprietary image formats overtake .JPG and .TIF.
Same problem with Autodesk's acquisition of the PCB tool Eagle. I'm remaining on an older version because I use the software irregularly and am not willing to lose access to all my past projects just because I missed a license payment. Subscription tools are fine for at the office (within reason), not so much for personal use.
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The answer to that, at least so far, is "run it in a VM."
I have all my Windows stuff running fine in a VM right now. In OSX, no less. The Windows is prevented from getting to the network, so MS can't screw it up and my stuff should continue to work well into the future.
Same thing for Apple: They're actively planning on screwing with 32-bit app compatibility. Well, I have a 32-bit-happy version of OS X running in a VM. I'll just move whatever I need to over there.
Sure, some time in the future this may all fall over. But we're not even close yet, and no matter what, I won't encourage subscription / rental.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I deal with RAW files too. But not in Photoshop. That's the least reasonable tool for me to use for my photos. Lightroom (again, the most recent non-sub version) is presently the way to go there, and if that stops working, I'm already well on the way into developing a replacement.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.