[PLUG-TALK] Adobe ends perpetual licenses

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sat, 11 May 2013 07:57:51 -0700
Denis Heidtmann <denis.heidtmann at gmail.com> dijo:

>On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:46 AM, Michael Rasmussen
><michael at jamhome.us>wrote:
>
>> Worse, the Creative Cloud comes with very question terms of service.
>>
>> http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2013/20130508_1a-Adobe-legal-agreement.html

>I wonder what Adobe's attitude will net: success competition,
>government action (in Europe, not here), hacker attacks?  Do you think
>that big users will send their lawyers to negotiate less one-sided
>agreements?  What upgrades to the present versions of their software
>could entice a company into such a trap?
>
>My reaction to this is Adobe does not want the business.

There will be more competition, but not enough to worry Adobe. These
days they own the DTP market.

As for legal action, I doubt there will be any. I do note there are a
couple places where the agreement attempts to limit Adobe's liability,
but to at least some extent those clauses are not enforceable. There's
an old saying in law "you can't contract out of liability." You can
try, and if the party you harmed doesn't know the law you may succeed
in escaping liability. 

Will big users try to negotiate better terms? They probably don't have
to. PSU, for example has a license for probably hundreds of seats for
the Creative Suite. Such licenses have always had a different contract
than the individual user license. In fact, most large software vendors
even have a different license if the user is a government organization. 

I cannot speak to the question of what upgrades there will be to entice
users to switch to the Creative Cloud version. I haven't used Adobe
products in years so I'm more than a bit out of touch. But I can say
that, from the comments on the InDesign listserve, most users are going
to stick with CS6, at least for the time being. However, some users
will have no choice. For example, printing companies need to take files
from customers in whatever format the customer wants to supply them. A
small print shop can get away with just demanding PDF only, but the
bigger shops will have to be able to open the latest formats. Ad
agencies also demand that freelance designers who work for them use the
same version that they use. 

A number of years ago when software activation first appeared I
predicted that this is where it would end up. A monthly fee to use
software that calls home has always been the holy grail for Adobe,
Microsoft, Intuit, and other big software companies. Activation was an
interim step to get the public to accept the idea. You can expect the
same for future versions of Windows, Microsoft Office, etc.