5 ms·

Charging for a product that is actively being developed and improved is not rent seeking.

• benatkin 3y ago
  That's the logic behind Adobe Creative Cloud. A lot of people want something they could purchase outright, and I'll just grab the text: > Can I buy Photoshop outright? No. Photoshop is available only through a Creative Cloud subscription that you pay for either monthly or annually. You can subscribe to Photoshop alone or choose a plan with multiple apps. https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html (bottom of the page)
  • dnissley 3y ago
    This has nothing to do with rent seeking. You just don't like subscription models. Maybe you think they don't deliver enough new value through the thousands of engineers they employ to justify a subscription model, and that they should cut costs and pull a Musk and lay off 90% of them (and other employees) and simply offer what they offer today for way less money. Or that they should cater to the very small portion of the market that's willing to pay $10k for a standalone version of photoshop. But obviously enough of their customers disagree with you that it doesn't make sense for them to go that route. It's not like they're using regulatory capture to force people to only use Adobe products. There are network effects but compared to social networks they are pretty weak -- if a truly better product came along people would start using that instead (see Figma vs XD). And on top of that the barriers to entry are very low -- you could literally start to copy their products pixel by pixel starting right this instant.