Just like for Adobe it is also not a philosophical issue for me but
simply a financial one.
In my situation where I only do odd paid jobs I am not prepared to pay
all the months when I don't make money.
Up to now I afforded myself the updates when I had finished a job and
got paid. That way Adobe got something out of me
which will now end and I know many people who think the same.
I am not so sure that Adobe are happy with the number of people using CC
which could possibly be the reason for the survey.
Maybe one day we will be able to buy there products again as in the
past. They should at least give us that option.
All this could become a bigger problem for Adobe than for me:-) .
CS6 is on such a level of sophistication that I don't think I will ever
need more and there are many things which I do not even
use or understand yet, so still a lot to learn and improve.
On a final note - there are many other good products available!
Uwe
There is also a philosophical aspect to this debate.
Perhaps one thing gnawing at some who voice this complaint is
two-fold: the natural repulsion we have against having even a small
sense of being a slave, and the repulsion we have against being coerced.
I think it was King Solomon who said the borrower is slave to the
lender and others have said the renter is slave to the owner.
Therefore we observe that many people prefer to own most things. This
is not to deny there ever being a practical reason to choose to rent
or to have joint ownership, but that doesn't count when one can make a
choice on his own without any coercion. Russians had to put up with
communism for 70 yrs. and they eventually threw it off, not based on a
pure ideology but rather on the repulsion that they were being
coerced, and were treated as mere slaves of the state.
At the same time, some support the Adobe rental subscription idea by
saying "well, even under the old system you never actually bought the
software, you were merely licensing it from Adobe which amounts to
renting."But that is not entirely true, that argument is merely a
smoke screen away from the own-versus-rent arguments. You DID "own"
the software and in the final analysis it doesn't matter what the fine
print says. You were not going to be brought before a court and
charged with a misdemeanor simply because you stated you bought the
software, and no one was going to throw the fine print at you.
Furthermore, Adobe itself states on their site that the so-called
"licenses" could be used in perpetuity, which, if English words means
anything at all, that means that Adobe is admitting you owned the
software, subject only to certain terms of use.
So on the one hand there is that "repulsion" against being coerced or
to perform slave-like things (forced rentals) and on the other hand,
there remains a memory of perpetual ownership.
Adobe, of course, for its part, is not motivated by any philosophy or
political ideology, it is purely a business plan to them. Adobe is
merely hoping to take in more money using this model than with the
perpetual license model. I recently read where the number of paying
Adobe subscribers (combined single and complete cloud) is now
approaching 500,000. But I have never seen how many copies of various
CS5 and CS6 products they sold to compare that with to conclude
whether this is a success story or maybe not so successful.
Just some thoughts ...
Lee
