7 ms·

If a car company sells you a car engine that bursts into flames, they're still held liable for damages. They can't just say "Uhmm... The engine may burst into f

by Smerity 14y ago

If a car company sells you a car engine that bursts into flames, they're still held liable for damages. They can't just say "Uhmm... The engine may burst into flames, you should buy our next model". The fact that Adobe can get away with this amazes me! With the theoretical engine problem you need to recall/repair each and every engine individually. With software, once you've developed the patch you can distribute it at next to no cost. There's no excuse for this. Why can software engineers and companies get away with such horrendous practices?

nitrogen 14y ago
Why can software engineers and companies get away with such horrendous practices? Because most of us who write software believe that the risks associated with effectively zero liability for software failure are far outweighed by the costs of government intervention. General purpose software is far too "easy" to create for mandatory liability to make any sense. The better solution is for the market to demand simple security fixes in situations like this. [Edited to clarify that software risk is less costly than government intervention]
- regnum 14y ago
  Steve Jobs was right. Adobe is lazy.
  - quink 14y ago
    They're not lazy. If you've ever used Fireworks in the Macromedia days and compare it to the massive behemoths of slowness they've added to each subsequent CS version, I can only conclude that they're not lazy. An effort this concerted to make no progress in ten years and add naught but a twenty second startup time on processors that weren't even conceived back in Macromedia Fireworks 8 days cannot be a product of laziness. Just like I think that this here thing doesn't have anything to do with laziness. It's that Adobe wants you to pirate the crap out of CS6, because they know they won't get money from you anyway. They do know, however, that every cent they don't get directly from you is a cent they'll get from your future employer or customer or small business which is forced to buy Adobe CS6. It's not laziness, it's doing exactly what they need to to make sure that they keep their repeat customers upgrading.
    - m3mb3r 14y ago
      >> It's that Adobe wants you to pirate the crap out of CS6, because they know they won't get money from you anyway. Interesting. I've heard this thing before, with Photoshop and Windows too. Is there any evidence for this?
      - jdietrich 14y ago
        Microsoft have the technical capability to deactivate pirate installs of Windows through WGA. Instead, they choose to display a nag message and disable software updates. Microsoft spent a ton of money developing a really sophisticated anti-piracy system, but decided against using it to prevent piracy by end-users. To me, that speaks volumes about how piracy fits into their business strategy.
    - gte910h 14y ago
      The CS6 sub offer (50 bucks a month for everything) and preorder for old customer special ($30 bucks a month for everything) are making TONS of people sign up.
    - protolif 14y ago
      Sluggishness is not evidence of good or even hard work.
      - alanh 14y ago
        I’m fairly sure it was sarcasm :)
  - samstave 14y ago
    I am not so sure that they are lazy, per se - but I will say they have zero cult of personality in that company. Name one famous employee of adobe along the same lines you would recognize with any of the tech titans: gates, jobs, ballmer, brin, zuck, etc. etc. etc. Never has an Adobe's leader's name been in that list. The reason this is important - is that there is no personal image attached to adobe's products. This lets them get away with more mediocrity than you would see with any of the above. You don't have the scorn of the user all pointed at one person's identity - you have it pointed at the nebulous "adobe" as a whole. If they had a charismatic, public figurehead I a sure there would be a lot different about how we view adobe and its products.
    - EnderMB 14y ago
      I was thinking this the other day, and given that Adobe is a company that could struggle with the demise of Flash on the web and growing discontent over its core product line the time is almost right for an evangelist to take control and make sweeping changes. If a person came along and made drastic changes, such as the re-branding of Flash, a complete overhaul of the Adobe Creative Suite and the stripping-down of the PDF format I can see a lot of people turning their heads.
    - WiseWeasel 14y ago
      That would be John Nack.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    There's an old joke - field marshal Model is asked the secret of his success as a commander. He says the key is managing the men under you. They are smart or stupid, energetic or lazy. The smart and energetic make excellent field commanders, the smart and lazy make good staff officers, and the lazy and stupid can handle supply. And the lazy and energetic? Transfer them elsewhere. Adobe isn't lazy. It takes extra work to implement multiple cross platform ui libraries with twenty different slider widgets none of which work quite right.
    - wtracy 14y ago
      I think you meant that the "dumb and energetic" should be transferred elsewhere. Somewhere I heard a variation on this quote, attributed to Napoleon, that his solution for the dumb and enthusiastic was to "shoot them".
      - crazygringo 14y ago
        I heard a variation say that the dumb and energetic were cannon fodder.
      - Tloewald 14y ago
        Right, dumb and energetic, oops.
doc4t 14y ago
Please stop comparing software with real world objects. While popular the comparison between cars and computer programs are not well chosen. Actually comparing software to any physical object is point-less. These two only have anything in common on the surface. If you were to make software require the rigorous testing that physical products like cars undergo you would likely never be able to ship anything. If you did the customer would not be willing to pay the price. Software is infinitely more complex than even space shuttles. The number of possible combinations which you program can traverse is so big it doesn't make any sense. You could of course start proving mathematically that your software will always behave correctly. This would require you to use a language which facilitates such a method like erlang. No more web development in PHP, Ruby, JavaScript or anything else which relies on probabilistic garbage collection. I guarantee you that once you spend the money having your code proven your costs are so high that no one will buy your software. In stead they'll turn to the competitor who wrote it in VB and accept their EULA and live with any errors. The nature of software is not the same as of physical objects. You can either accept this and plan accordingly or you can betray yourself and keep getting angry about bugs.
- krschultz 14y ago
  "Software is infinitely more complex than even space shuttles" Hardly. I write software for fun, everything from low level drivers up the stack to web apps. My job is engineering mechanical systems more complex than the space shuttle - and with more lives at stake. The two are not even remotely comparable.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    doc4t's next sentence ("The number of possible combinations which you[sic] program can traverse is so big it doesn't make any sense.") is critical in understanding the sentence you quoted. Writing software is not so complex, but guaranteeing its operation is insanely complex.
    - krschultz 14y ago
      And how is that different from a mechanical system? We have fatigue/vibration, corrosion, and wear. What's the equivalent in software? There is a reason they park perfectly good airplanes in the desert - we can't gaurentee they won't fall out of the sky because it's impossible to perfectly predict fatigue. And I have issues all the time related to things failing 3 or 5 years after they were built (yet they have a 40 year design lifetime). Metals always seem to find a new way to corrode and bearings find new ways to fail. There is no equivalent to a corrosive, hostile, environment in software. Not to mention the random things thrown at you in the physical world. If you design jet engines, be prepared for birds to get sucked in (hopefully not too many, and if so, hopefully your pilot can land in a nearby river full of ferries to pickup the passengers). If you design buildings, get ready for earthquakes of unknown size, hurricanes of unknown wind speed, and terrorists with various methods of taking your structure down. We can't gaurentee anything. In fact we can barely test most of the complex stuff because it's too expensive. Cars are cheap relative to most things. They don't crash 737s to find out what happens or shake an entire city just to ensure that it is built correctly. You have to predict all of this stuff using calculations and it largely goes untested.
ars 14y ago
> If a car company sells you a car engine that bursts into flames, they're still held liable for damages. Not forever! Only for 10 years, after that they are no longer responsible. Software is the same way, only the timeframe is much shorter, and there is no set standard. Although less than a year, like CS5.5 is too short. I would suggest double or triple the usual time between major versions as a reasonable timeframe, in this case that seems to be about yearly, so Adobe should provide support for 2 to 3 years for old versions.
- evoxed 14y ago
  But if cars are renewed annually with, say, one major revision every 4-5 years then the critical lifespan should be about double the time between major upgrades. That way old products can't be killed the day they're updated.
- protolif 14y ago
  The time should be proportionate to the cost of the software.
hubbit 14y ago
Do you really want to know? I'll tell you. You know that thing called a "license" that geeks are always arguing about? Grab one of those, Adobe's or anyone else's, and find the section that is all uppercase that includes the word LIABILITY or the string LIABL. In that section you will find your answer.

by Smerity 14y ago

nitrogen 14y ago

Why can software engineers and companies get away with such horrendous practices? Because most of us who write software believe that the risks associated with effectively zero liability for software failure are far outweighed by the costs of government intervention. General purpose software is far too "easy" to create for mandatory liability to make any sense. The better solution is for the market to demand simple security fixes in situations like this. [Edited to clarify that software risk is less costly than government intervention]

regnum 14y ago
Steve Jobs was right. Adobe is lazy.
- quink 14y ago
  They're not lazy. If you've ever used Fireworks in the Macromedia days and compare it to the massive behemoths of slowness they've added to each subsequent CS version, I can only conclude that they're not lazy. An effort this concerted to make no progress in ten years and add naught but a twenty second startup time on processors that weren't even conceived back in Macromedia Fireworks 8 days cannot be a product of laziness. Just like I think that this here thing doesn't have anything to do with laziness. It's that Adobe wants you to pirate the crap out of CS6, because they know they won't get money from you anyway. They do know, however, that every cent they don't get directly from you is a cent they'll get from your future employer or customer or small business which is forced to buy Adobe CS6. It's not laziness, it's doing exactly what they need to to make sure that they keep their repeat customers upgrading.
  - m3mb3r 14y ago
    >> It's that Adobe wants you to pirate the crap out of CS6, because they know they won't get money from you anyway. Interesting. I've heard this thing before, with Photoshop and Windows too. Is there any evidence for this?
    - jdietrich 14y ago
      Microsoft have the technical capability to deactivate pirate installs of Windows through WGA. Instead, they choose to display a nag message and disable software updates. Microsoft spent a ton of money developing a really sophisticated anti-piracy system, but decided against using it to prevent piracy by end-users. To me, that speaks volumes about how piracy fits into their business strategy.
  - gte910h 14y ago
    The CS6 sub offer (50 bucks a month for everything) and preorder for old customer special ($30 bucks a month for everything) are making TONS of people sign up.
  - protolif 14y ago
    Sluggishness is not evidence of good or even hard work.
    - alanh 14y ago
      I’m fairly sure it was sarcasm :)
- samstave 14y ago
  I am not so sure that they are lazy, per se - but I will say they have zero cult of personality in that company. Name one famous employee of adobe along the same lines you would recognize with any of the tech titans: gates, jobs, ballmer, brin, zuck, etc. etc. etc. Never has an Adobe's leader's name been in that list. The reason this is important - is that there is no personal image attached to adobe's products. This lets them get away with more mediocrity than you would see with any of the above. You don't have the scorn of the user all pointed at one person's identity - you have it pointed at the nebulous "adobe" as a whole. If they had a charismatic, public figurehead I a sure there would be a lot different about how we view adobe and its products.
  - EnderMB 14y ago
    I was thinking this the other day, and given that Adobe is a company that could struggle with the demise of Flash on the web and growing discontent over its core product line the time is almost right for an evangelist to take control and make sweeping changes. If a person came along and made drastic changes, such as the re-branding of Flash, a complete overhaul of the Adobe Creative Suite and the stripping-down of the PDF format I can see a lot of people turning their heads.
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    That would be John Nack.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  There's an old joke - field marshal Model is asked the secret of his success as a commander. He says the key is managing the men under you. They are smart or stupid, energetic or lazy. The smart and energetic make excellent field commanders, the smart and lazy make good staff officers, and the lazy and stupid can handle supply. And the lazy and energetic? Transfer them elsewhere. Adobe isn't lazy. It takes extra work to implement multiple cross platform ui libraries with twenty different slider widgets none of which work quite right.
  - wtracy 14y ago
    I think you meant that the "dumb and energetic" should be transferred elsewhere. Somewhere I heard a variation on this quote, attributed to Napoleon, that his solution for the dumb and enthusiastic was to "shoot them".
    - crazygringo 14y ago
      I heard a variation say that the dumb and energetic were cannon fodder.
    - Tloewald 14y ago
      Right, dumb and energetic, oops.

doc4t 14y ago

Please stop comparing software with real world objects. While popular the comparison between cars and computer programs are not well chosen. Actually comparing software to any physical object is point-less. These two only have anything in common on the surface. If you were to make software require the rigorous testing that physical products like cars undergo you would likely never be able to ship anything. If you did the customer would not be willing to pay the price. Software is infinitely more complex than even space shuttles. The number of possible combinations which you program can traverse is so big it doesn't make any sense. You could of course start proving mathematically that your software will always behave correctly. This would require you to use a language which facilitates such a method like erlang. No more web development in PHP, Ruby, JavaScript or anything else which relies on probabilistic garbage collection. I guarantee you that once you spend the money having your code proven your costs are so high that no one will buy your software. In stead they'll turn to the competitor who wrote it in VB and accept their EULA and live with any errors. The nature of software is not the same as of physical objects. You can either accept this and plan accordingly or you can betray yourself and keep getting angry about bugs.

krschultz 14y ago
"Software is infinitely more complex than even space shuttles" Hardly. I write software for fun, everything from low level drivers up the stack to web apps. My job is engineering mechanical systems more complex than the space shuttle - and with more lives at stake. The two are not even remotely comparable.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  doc4t's next sentence ("The number of possible combinations which you[sic] program can traverse is so big it doesn't make any sense.") is critical in understanding the sentence you quoted. Writing software is not so complex, but guaranteeing its operation is insanely complex.
  - krschultz 14y ago
    And how is that different from a mechanical system? We have fatigue/vibration, corrosion, and wear. What's the equivalent in software? There is a reason they park perfectly good airplanes in the desert - we can't gaurentee they won't fall out of the sky because it's impossible to perfectly predict fatigue. And I have issues all the time related to things failing 3 or 5 years after they were built (yet they have a 40 year design lifetime). Metals always seem to find a new way to corrode and bearings find new ways to fail. There is no equivalent to a corrosive, hostile, environment in software. Not to mention the random things thrown at you in the physical world. If you design jet engines, be prepared for birds to get sucked in (hopefully not too many, and if so, hopefully your pilot can land in a nearby river full of ferries to pickup the passengers). If you design buildings, get ready for earthquakes of unknown size, hurricanes of unknown wind speed, and terrorists with various methods of taking your structure down. We can't gaurentee anything. In fact we can barely test most of the complex stuff because it's too expensive. Cars are cheap relative to most things. They don't crash 737s to find out what happens or shake an entire city just to ensure that it is built correctly. You have to predict all of this stuff using calculations and it largely goes untested.

ars 14y ago

> If a car company sells you a car engine that bursts into flames, they're still held liable for damages. Not forever! Only for 10 years, after that they are no longer responsible. Software is the same way, only the timeframe is much shorter, and there is no set standard. Although less than a year, like CS5.5 is too short. I would suggest double or triple the usual time between major versions as a reasonable timeframe, in this case that seems to be about yearly, so Adobe should provide support for 2 to 3 years for old versions.

evoxed 14y ago
But if cars are renewed annually with, say, one major revision every 4-5 years then the critical lifespan should be about double the time between major upgrades. That way old products can't be killed the day they're updated.
protolif 14y ago
The time should be proportionate to the cost of the software.

hubbit 14y ago

Do you really want to know? I'll tell you. You know that thing called a "license" that geeks are always arguing about? Grab one of those, Adobe's or anyone else's, and find the section that is all uppercase that includes the word LIABILITY or the string LIABL. In that section you will find your answer.