21 ms·

About 25 years ago, working at one of those dot com bubble internet consultancy firms, I was told by an Adobe rep that they knew everyone at home had a pirated

• whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  Figma’s pricing is extremely exploitative too, it’s essentially designed in a way were trivial actions can instantiate new subscription seats that have to be manually removed.
• dylan604 2y ago
  The number of graphic artists working from home well before COVID definitely put a kibosh to that theory.
  • robertlagrant 2y ago
    Were they not working for a company?
    • nickff 2y ago
      Many graphic artists operate as independent contractors/consultants.
    • imabotbeep2937 2y ago
      Presumably they mean gig economy aka artists are vastly undervalued. For instance. It's not that AI is replacing artists. It's that people think you don't need to pay a license for generated images, even when they were clearly and provably stolen from copyright material. The bar was just lowered. If "AI" is used to remove the watermark from Shutterstock people think that's legal now. So WHEN gig economy workers get picked up by a company. Yes they pay for a software license as a "tax" on going pro. But from personal experience. A vast amount of art and content is made by people from developing economies on Fiver or whatever. Many of those licenses are stolen. And now everyone thinks you don't need to pay artists anymore. So nobody will generate licenses. Adobe was basically right. They're just going at it in the maximally enshittified manner.
      • dylan604 2y ago
        No, this is not what I meant at all. I meant the independent artists that work without being attached to a firm or anything. The number of small owner/operator type places in the graphics/marketing type of world is apparently a much more common thing than the readers of this forum are familiar.
        • robertlagrant 2y ago
          Is this still the case with Creative Cloud? I'm surprised that that would be so expensive for people whose job it is to use it.
  • acdha 2y ago
    An independent contractor using Adobe is still helping cement Adobe’s perception as a must-have for business. If you worked in that space at all, it was super common to have things like Illustrator or Photoshop specified in contracts for designers and print shops, and pretty much everyone needed Acrobat Pro for sone proprietary feature which didn’t exist in the alternatives. Adobe wasn’t going to risk bad publicity going after some freelancer for $800, but they could count on everyone in that world needing to use Adobe products for compatibility reasons to provide the inertia which meant that the businesses who hired those freelancers kept paying Adobe rather than switching at the threat of a lawsuit.
    • dylan604 2y ago
      Anybody remember the Business Software Alliance[0] from years ago threatening to audit your company for using unlicensed software? I cannot believe any business would be dumb enough to allow them on their premises to even conduct an audit. Anyone with two brain cells would just laugh in their face. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Alliance
      • stevekemp 2y ago
        And yet it was only last week we started hearing of Oracle sending nastygrams to Java users: https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/10/fortune_200_oracle_java_audit/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/10/fortune_200_oracle_ja... As covered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40639943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40639943 So this is not just a thing of the past, sadly.
      • crote 2y ago
        How exactly are you supposed to do that, when your license includes their right to audit your business? If you refuse them they're going to sue you, and they have far more money to spend on lawyers than your business.
        • dylan604 2y ago
          You need to have proof that the software is being used. You also have to provide notice and cannot expect to just walk up and demand inspections. Also, this is a private company so they have no authority to do this. The primary bit of evidence to the BSA was/is from disgruntled employees "ratting" on their employer. Is that sufficient evidence of a crime to justify a warrant for any TLA to do an investigation? If not, that's the only way you're looking at my computers. Again, laughing in their face would be my response.
• mistrial9 2y ago
  new executives coming in, while the well connected ones leave completely to chase unicorns? maryhodderetc
• lotsofpulp 2y ago
  > It seems their attitudes changed soon after, perhaps due to their almost total market dominance, and they became aggressive towards their users in the pursuit of profits It was probably just the advent of new technology that allowed them to rent instead of sell their product, and they can do it at different prices to different customers (price discrimination).
  • _aavaa_ 2y ago
    Not so minor nitpick, but afaik you never got to purchase and own the software, you only purchased a license to it.
    • swiftcoder 2y ago
      That license used to be perpetual, and only enforced locally (i.e. without connecting to the internet). That's about as close to "owning" as anyone gets in software.
      • _aavaa_ 2y ago
        If you need to put "owning" in quotation marks it isn't owning.
        • swiftcoder 2y ago
          If we go down this particular philosophical rabbit hole, you don't "own" anything. Stop making payments into the capitalist system we live under, and the bailiffs come and take away your car/house/possessions... A perpetual license is not meaningfully distinct from ownership in the context of software - you don't "own" open source software either, just license it for the low, low cost of free.
          • _aavaa_ 2y ago
            > Stop making payments into the capitalist system we live under, and the bailiffs come and take away your car/house/possessions Your house/car get re-possessed if you stop making their loan payments since they are listed as collateral for the loan, that's different then you not owning them in the first place. I don't need my builder's permission to add a sofa, paint the walls, or change the locks. But god help you if Adobe finds out that you've changed the DRM locks on the version of Photoshop that you "own". > you don't "own" open source software either, just license it for the low, low cost of free. Depends on the license, ones like Unlicense or 0BSD try to opt out of the default copyrighted licensed state of released code.
• nobutterbetter 2y ago
  [dead]
• freitzkriesler2 2y ago
  I have a full paid license of acrobat pro. I want to pay for the 2020 version as that's the last one before it became rental software crap. I refuse to pay monthly for this software. That and office, give me the full one time license. Im not paying for cloud crap.
  • lenerdenator 2y ago
    <sarcasm>Dear lord, did you stop to think of the shareholders before you wrote that screed?!</sarcasm> SaaS is a virus that has drastically reduced the power of the individual creator for the benefit of people who really don't need more money. I wish there were a viable FLOSS alternative to more of Adobe's CS software.
    • dartos 2y ago
      SaaS itself is fine. A lot of software has recurring costs for the saas company (think clarifai, chatgpt, or circleci) Subscriptions for software that you run on your own machine is a little much tho.
      • lenerdenator 2y ago
        The word for the activity occurring in your second sentence used to just be called "hosting". The problem is that there are fewer and fewer pieces of software that aren't hosted somewhere.
    • hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
      Gotcha capitalism with a side of rent-seeking. If indies need it, then sure, it can be necessary to sustain smaller shops that have to support backend/cloud features and multiple OSes that churn APIs faster than a newspaper.
    • datavirtue 2y ago
      Isn't the shareholder us?
  • asnyder 2y ago
• stronglikedan 2y ago
  > It meant people learnt their software at home and then insisted on using it at work, where it would be a paid for license. That's also why so many companies practically give their software away through educational licenses.
• hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  VMware and Citrix had a gentleman's agreement: they pirated each-other's stuff, and agreed not to break users' stuff in production and keep licensing issues to warnings.
• grumpyprole 2y ago
  They drove me off Lightroom, I was just a causal user. The upsell spam and ads in Adobe Reader has also driven me away from that too. I would have considered buying an upgrade for both, but the price was never right for casual home use. Now I don't use any Adobe products at all.
  • ein0p 2y ago
    As someone looking to drop Lightroom, what did you move to? Last I checked everything else sucked pretty bad.
    • grumpyprole 2y ago
      I switched to Capture One. Not as easy to use as Lightroom, but the RAW processing is actually superior. It's a one time purchase. The professionals can choose to upgrade every year, the casual users can upgrade less frequently.
      • buildbot 2y ago
        Capture One is just ~5 years behind Adobe pushing people to subscriptions - in fact they are actually quite bit more expensive for what you get now. Perpetual licenses are going away
    • coder543 2y ago
      I also use Capture One, and I actually liked it significantly better than Lightroom when I did a side by side comparison of them a couple of years ago. Lightroom is starting to get some HDR processing capabilities that are interesting to me, but that one feature by itself isn't currently worth paying Adobe's crazy subscription prices just to use a program that I otherwise don't enjoy.
    • matwood 2y ago
      And they all still only deal with a part of what LR provides. You're going to be upset. LR as a complete package (editing, DAM, apps on all devices, etc...) is hard to beat. I'm about to turn LR back on b/c I find myself taking fewer pictures as to not deal with my non-LR workflow.
• hahajk 2y ago
  What have you replaced lightroom with? That's the one thing Adobe makes that I haven't found a good replacement for.
  • tombert 2y ago
    I've not really done enough with "real" photography to have strong opinions on this, but Aftershot (which was included in a Humble Bundle a few years ago) has been ok for the stuff I used it for.
  • Yodel0914 2y ago
    I've been using Exposure for many years, but it seems like it might be dying/dead - they haven't released an update in a long time, YT and social media accounts are quiet etc. If you're using a Mac, the new Nitro from gentlemancoders seems quite good. I haven't made the leap yet though because it's missing file/library management and layers.
  • noyesno 2y ago
    I've been quite happy with my switch to Capture One. They offer subscription and one-off purchases. I haven't seen the need to upgrade since my initial purchase. The Capture ONE RAW engine also seems to produce better results for my Fuji than Lightroom.
• CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  It's weird to watch Adobe make these fundamentally short sighted decisions. I can only assume the ultimate cause is the individual motivations of executives and managers. "Oooo, if we raise subscriptions $10/mo, we'll make lots of money, and it'll look really good on my annual review." "Oooo, this cancellation fee will really help our retention, which will look really good on my annual review." "Making Photoshop subscription only will do amazing things for our revenue." When you have complete market dominance, you have little opportunity for growth. If your employees and investors have an insatiable need for growth, you have to try anyway, and that's where things fall apart. The #1 threat to your magical money faucet is something replacing your product as the photo editor of choice, and you should be 100% focused on making sure that doesn't happen. To do that, you need to be focused on keeping up quality, periodically adding the latest features, and making absolutely sure that the next generation of artists is coming up using your tool. That Adobe rep 25 years ago was 100% correct, but "I keep the money pipe flowing and did not actively make it worse" does not get you a promotion.
  • alt227 2y ago
    When you make the industries best software and pretty much have a monopoly on the market, the only place left to go is adding markup to your product.
    • callalex 2y ago
      That’s not true, you can also expand to new markets. For example Adobe doesn’t really have many offerings for musicians.
      • gabeio 2y ago
        > That’s not true, you can also expand to new markets. For example Adobe doesn’t really have many offerings for musicians. Ah yes, the google style of offerings. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ LoopStart: Expand into so many markets to then be unmaintainable, then randomly decide to focus on your main stream of revenue again and kill off the side offerings GOTO LoopStart.
• denton-scratch 2y ago
  > Now the only Adobe product most of us at work have is except Acrobat Reader. [I think you didn't mean 'except'] I haven't had an installed copy of Adobe Reader on any computer I've used in the last 15 years.
• seemaze 2y ago
  I was an architecture undergrad (bricks , not bits) in the early 00’s and everyone had pirated software. And then we all got hired and brought our quiver of technical skills with is into industry and convinced our managers to purchase the tools we knew so well. Now as the manager making decisions, I actively search out alternatives to Adobe due to the overwhelmingly poor experience (cost, bugs, support, tactics). I know folks who keep VMs for the explicit purpose of running releases from 10 years ago.
• spencerchubb 2y ago
  Somewhat reminds me of netflix's policy on sharing accounts. The CEO used to straight up say they don't care, and it's not really feasible to enforce account-sharing rules. Fast forward to today, and they "figured out" how to enforce it.
• pndy 2y ago
  > It seems their attitudes changed soon after, perhaps due to their almost total market dominance, I'm pretty sure Adobe went for subscription model as one of the earliest big companies and then the trend bloomed all around us - especially on mobile devices. Few years ago my friend had issues with her computer after being forced to upgrade from Win7 to 10 - it was something drivers related. She reinstalled 7 but couldn't activate her CS anymore because servers for that particular version were no more active. She could use crack and activate the software but she didn't want to risk issues if she'd face the visit from Polish tax office (which is permitted to check legality of software in business). Purchasing new license was out of the question because Adobe already introduced subscription at that point and she, as a single-person company couldn't afford it in expenses. A colleague suggested her Affinity and she gladly switched.
  • troad 2y ago
    > Polish tax office (which is permitted to check legality of software in business) Ugh, what an egregious misuse of public funds. Maybe they should also check the labels on the employees' clothes, in case of illegal knock-offs.
  • nox101 2y ago
    I tried switching to Affinity. I'm glad it exists. I use Affinity Designer but Affinity Photo didn't meet my needs and I ended up signing up for a Photoshop subscription. It was small workflow stuff but ultimately, for me needs, some poor UX choices in Affinity meant editing 200+ files would have taking 2-3 hours more. Photoshop was $120 for a 1yr subscription. My time is easily worth more than $120 for the 2-3 hours I saved. I'm not dissing Affinity Photo. It seems great. And like I said, I use Affinity Designer (never owned Illustrator). all I'm saying is $120 isn't that much money if you actually need the software for work. If you just need something for a hobby than there's Affinity Photo ($50) as well as gIMP and Krita. There's also Photopea which I find is meeting most of my short term Photoshop needs so I might switch and give them my $$$ instead of Adobe. Though I suspect if I ever have to do 200+ images again I'll find Photopea's workflow to be missing the things that made me pony up last time.
    • 2y ago
• bradgessler 2y ago
  That was the best most companies could do before SaaS. Now that we live in a SaaS era, it's much easier and acceptable for corps like Adobe to minimize piracy and increase revenue with subscriptions. This isn't unique to Adobe—most software companies have followed suit because it just makes sense. What is unique about Adobe is they're doing some really shady things with subscriptions that are abusive to customers, which this suit hopefully ends and serves as a warning for other abusive SaaS corps.
  • crazygringo 2y ago
    This is exactly right -- Adobe wanted people to pirate Photoshop at home because they knew it wasn't realistic for a lot of home users to pay for an entire Photoshop license upfront. Back in 2010, that was a whopping $700 [1]. SaaS changed that -- you can now get Photoshop for a month (no annual contract) for $10 [2, 3]. Which is truly just an amazing deal -- that $700 in 2010 would be $1015 today, so the subscription will be cheaper until you use it for eight and a half years, plus you get upgrades. It's a lot fairer for everyone. Except when Adobe pulls sh*t like the FTC is suing them over. But yes -- SaaS absolutely ended the idea of companies wanting home users to pirate their stuff so companies would buy it. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/12/photoshop.first.look.wired/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/12/photoshop.first.look.wir... [2] https://petapixel.com/how-much-is-photoshop/ https://petapixel.com/how-much-is-photoshop/ [3] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography.html
• kbenson 2y ago
  Once the infrastructure and social acceptance was there to allow for subscription based pricing, the bost benefit ratio shifted enough that the benefit of those people using Adobe products at home that weren't paid for changed, since they could now get the specific products they needed for a small fee that only lasted a short while. I.e. $400-$1200 for a home user is a hard sell for someone that only needs it for a bit, so they accepted the benefit piracy gained them since the sales lost was minimal. Once they could feasibly expect someone to pay $30 for a short term access to some tools (whether true or not, it's the perception of that which matters), I think there's little incentive for them to still allow that piracy. I'm not sure if this was very forward thinking of them or they just got lucky by allowing the piracy instead of allowing cheap/free home users, but I suspect they would have had a much harder time trying to charge for home users if they had previously offered home user free use licenses to legalize the benefit that piracy was providing. Raising prices is harder than enforcing pricing that was unenforced, and charging something for what was previously free is very hard to get away with without a huge reputation impact.[1] 1: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...
• sirspacey 2y ago
  Yep, I finally cancelled and didn’t take any of the “two free months” offer because I just don’t trust their billing approach anymore. The “pay monthly but can’t cancel for one year” model ruined it.
  • langcss 2y ago
    For after effects they offered monthly, monthly with commitment and annual. Same pricing structure as a gym. I guess they need to make it clear but it was clear to me that a cancellation fee applied.
• throwaway743 2y ago
  Pretty sure cc is still piratable
• ljm 2y ago
  The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky describes the fall of Behance, the fall of Adobe’s perpetual licensing, and the rise of their cloud subscription offering. I wonder what he thinks about all that in hindsight, putting the many millions he made aside.
• readyman 2y ago
  [dead]
• ptelomere 2y ago
  Drug dealers also have the same modus operandi. First, free samples, then you must pay, once addicted you pay more and more, no money ? go sell these drugs and be an evangelist for us, now your work is our profit.
• magnetowasright 2y ago
  They also relied on schools when I was going through school, even before the free license for students offers. My schools would get cheap or free use of office suite, windows, and adobe creative suite, we'd all learn to do our class work on them (or have multimedia elective essentially being 'learn adobe creative suite' class), pirate them for home use, and have it even more entrenched for doing actual work with. Considering when I started at school, computers for student use for my whole school could be counted on one hand and they only had word perfect or something on them, they adapted to that particular changing landscape amazingly.
• coolandsmartrr 2y ago
  The idea of "use it at work" may have change drastically with the advent of social media. Nowadays, anyone can become a content creator[1], thereby making their home a place of work. This shift in trend may have compelled Adobe to pursue revenue from individual users, albeit rather aggressively. [1] On a side note, I lament how this phrasing became over-used by adult content creators, thereby making its connotation strongly affiliated with that industry.
  • chii 2y ago
    > This shift in trend may have compelled Adobe to pursue revenue from individual users if these individual users are deriving commercial revenue from the software, i dont see it as wrong to pursue revenue from them.
  • blitzar 2y ago
    [1] On a side note, I lament how this phrasing became over-used by people with an instagram account and a phone.
• paranoidrobot 2y ago
  > the last Adobe software I really used was Lightroom Same. But also because Lightroom hands-down beat out everything else in existence at the time (and possibly still does?) for it's fantastic digital-darkroom workflow. It also wasn't horribly expensive - I think it was around AUD$300 for the full version, and maybe $99 for an upgrade.
• ChrisRR 2y ago
  Presumably after a while that didn't ring true. I've worked at at least one company where an engineer flat out pirated the software he used, and I'd say all others have been a bit lax with the terms of the licence
• chefandy 2y ago
  I learned Photoshop on pirated copies. However, as a young professional that couldn't risk any of the malarkey involved with relying on an outdated, pirated tool cracked with a program written and compiled by who knows, I needed a real license-- that's especially true because PDFs were a major vector for malware infections at that point. However, I also could not afford to spend many hundreds of dollars upfront on their products! When they introduced the CC subscription, it was a an absolute lifesaver. Especially for hobby users or professionals with low-collaboration or less involved use cases, it's easily more expensive over the life of the software. But for people that consistently need the latest features in any number of their programs, it's actually a lot better. (And no, the open source alternatives do not work for my workflow, and they REALLY didn't back then. I might be able to squeak by with inkscape's current tools for typesetting, but having to work between that and gimp to modify type in an interactive layout would be idiotic in a professional workflow. It would be even clunkier than having to quickly develop a native GUI app a la winforms or in X-code but only being able to edit code in a word processor, and then pasting it into the IDE for syntax checking and compilation.)
• dev_tty01 2y ago
  I removed the last vestiges of Adobe products from my machine a few years ago. It took a while to find all the little bits of cruft and licensing daemons that had been spewed all over my Mac by their installers. What a mess.