Renting software just doesn't seem right.

Renting software just does not make fiscal sense to me. Sure I could buy the latest and greatest old, out of date, end of life software that has known performance issues. Or I could try and wrap my head around renting software that Adobe might decide to update when they feel like it. They'd really have no motivation to do so. It doesn't really matter to them because if I stop paying, I get nothing. None of this sounds very good for my intended migration to mirrorless over the next year. Just one more drop in the barrel for the "finding a new hobby" argument. Maybe the digital age as I know it is gone.

Why do I feel like I've just been kicked to the curb. Like I've just been told I don't matter. Give me a regular check or I don't care about you. Maybe I'm just turning into that cantankerous old fart that I've always laughed at. I guess I'm just at that point in my life where it's becoming more difficult to change, to grow.

OK, my rant is over. But damn... just damn...

Hello,

Generally the market is moving to subscription models across the board. So far for me, it has been about 50/50 if I consider it worth while.
e.g. My Office 365 is very much worth it, while my Adobe Photography Plan has not been worth it. I switched to this plan three years ago, so I do feel that I have been screwed based on the rather limited (and generally poor updates so far). We shall see if going forward Adobe can convince me otherwise.
The advantage to customers is supposed to be more frequent updates, which are more stable and less big bangs. The advantage to the companies is more stable cash flow, which make it easier to plan, adjust and react to customer feedback.
In the business space, it generally works to both parties advantage. For home stuff, I think it has been less so for the consumer, but positive for the vendor. The question will be if enough of the market moves in either direction.

Tim

tspear said:

The advantage to customers is supposed to be more frequent updates, which are more stable and less big bangs. The advantage to the companies is more stable cash flow, which make it easier to plan, adjust and react to customer feedback.

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For the vendor, subscription revenue leads to high stock prices, because the investment community views subscription revenues as more predictable than one-time sale revenues, and therefore a higher "quality of earnings.]

In the business space, it generally works to both parties advantage. For home stuff, I think it has been less so for the consumer, but positive for the vendor. The question will be if enough of the market moves in either direction.

Tim

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For businesses, cloud-based subscription software means less investment in their own datacenter for servers, and fewer employees to manage that datacenter. Those benefits aren't really available to consumers.

Phil

In the commercial world businesses were renting operating systems and system software since the dawn of computing. Commercial applications had expensive licence fees and annual maintenance contracts. We are really going full circle. In a few years time someone will spot a competitive opportunity to sell apps as once off charges again, probably to undermine the upward creep of current subscription prices and around the loop we will go again. Unless you write the software yourself you have the option to purchase it from a vendor using their pricing model or try to find an alternative or do without. Disruptive technologies will keep changing the commercial landscape.

I don't get the argument by 1361; sorry.

As Gnits notes, this is nothing new. Those of us who bought site licenses, service and tech support contracts, deployment services, and so on are used to this. I think some casual users want inexpensive; I get that. But you get what you pay for. If a developer makes all the money with one sale of one copy, there's not much incentive to continue to develop the software, squash bugs, etc. Indeed, one could look at that more like a service, where payment is typically ongoing. With good software I expect feature and fix updates, and I'm willing to pay. Whether the payment gest lumped together for version X.2 or in the form of a subscription payment over the same time, I don't care. I only care if I'm getting value for money.

And Adobe has the same motivation to upgrade as they did before. No upgrades, I decide it's not worth it and drop sub. Or I have perpetual license, decide updates aren't worth paying for, and don't upgrade. But note that in the former case I might have a lot less sunk cost than in the latter.

I said this elsewhere: Those who want Classic to survive should be glad it is now subscription only. That gives Adobe a revenue incentive to keep it alive and kicking as long as here are a significant number of people who want to use it, even if they invest little in new features. If it was perpetual their revenue ends when major features end, and they would kill it quicker. So if you want it to die a long, lingering death so we can keep using it, be glad there are people to pay rent.

1361 said:

Renting software just does not make fiscal sense to me.

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Personally, I'm ok with the subscription BUT I don't want to pay for Photoshop or extra cloud storage. I don't want/need either. Paying for those things seems like a waste to me because I don't need or want it. I only want Lightroom. I love Lightroom and I'd say $5 per month just for LR is fine and it would be pretty close to the usual purchase and then upgrade to the next major release like we've been used to. But now, we'd be forced to pay $120 per year. Just remove the requirement for extra storage or PS and that would solve just about everyone's problem.

Edited in Lightroom (the standalone version we all know and love )
http://www.thephotographyhobbyist.com/

d200_4me said:

Personally, I'm ok with the subscription BUT I don't want to pay for Photoshop or extra cloud storage. I don't want/need either. Paying for those things seems like a waste to me because I don't need or want it. I only want Lightroom. I love Lightroom and I'd say $5 per month just for LR is fine and it would be pretty close to the usual purchase and then upgrade to the next major release like we've been used to. But now, we'd be forced to pay $120 per year. Just remove the requirement for extra storage or PS and that would solve just about everyone's problem.

Edited in Lightroom (the standalone version we all know and love )
http://www.thephotographyhobbyist.com/

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I think that @Ferguson raises an important point, but I agree also with this post. $5 a month is no problem. I don't want the cloud storage from Adobe, and I already own CS 6 PS.

Phil

Ferguson said:

I said this elsewhere: Those who want Classic to survive should be glad it is now subscription only. That gives Adobe a revenue incentive to keep it alive and kicking as long as here are a significant number of people who want to use it, even if they invest little in new features. If it was perpetual their revenue ends when major features end, and they would kill it quicker. So if you want it to die a long, lingering death so we can keep using it, be glad there are people to pay rent.

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I would argue the exact opposite. I believe the subscription takes the incentive out of innovation. Even further, their current offering is proof of the start of this long slow death. If Adobe had no revenue coming in after their previous release of ver 6, they would have more motivation to come out with a good product people would want to buy. That motivation seems to be missing in the subscription model. People pay them a monthly/yearly fee and are locked in with nothing useable if/when they stop. It's a good fiscal decision for them to leave us high and dry without continued monetary support. For them, but not for me. I don't lease my cars, I buy them. I don't want to rent/lease my software either.

I understand that I'm not the corporate/professional user. That my needs are much different than others. But clearly, I'm being told that I am of no value to Adobe and Lightroom. I would pay double the price for what I want. I believe that would have been another option that should have been explored. Clearly, Adobe has a plan that does not favor me or my interests and forces me to explore all my options. All seem painful at the moment. I like and use my lightroom regularly and am not looking forward to a change. But, I dislike renting something I am going to regularly use. Whats next? Rent my camera so I can always have the latest and greatest? Sure, that might make sense for a corporation or a professional, but not for me. I'm just a retired old shutter bug. I'll use my camera until there is a significant change justifying the migration. This holds true for most things I invest in.

It's my belief that the rental model is proof of the downward spiral of these companies. The market has changed and their products and services are just not in demand like they once were. The younger generation doesn't seem to care about computers as I know them. Tablets and phones meet their surfing needs. Surfing is all they seemed concerned about. Consumer level products don't seem to matter anymore. Microsoft seems to prove this with everything they do lately. Data collection seems like the only light in the shrinking tunnel they're facing. To use a new copy of microsoft office, you must agree to let them collect data from everything you do with it. Including all the data from anyone who might be in your contacts, or might have contact with. Why do you think Adobe wants you to store your pictures with them? Data collection perhaps?

Feeling frustrated

1361 said:

Renting software just does not make fiscal sense to me. Maybe I'm just turning into that cantankerous old fart...

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Nothing wrong with being a cantankerous old fart !! Yes I ummed and arrred hard before finally going CC about a year ago, but honestly never looked back and no regrets. I also now have Office 365 Business on subscription and also Acrobat Pro. The cc subscription and the cloud are the way everything is heading. You can get them all fired up on several machines (each software varies) and updates are simple and straight forward.

You might also argue that the rental model is a reflection of success: the products are just very good.

Could I think of functionality I would like to add (whilst not compromising performance, of course)? Sure, though my list would be different from yours.

Can I think of things that would transform the way I use Lightroom? No, not really.

I would have continued to upgrade a "perpetual" licence, but that's just me. If money were tight I'd likely be thinking "good enough". Given a limited and increasingly crowded market place, a leasing model may become the only way to generate a decent revenue stream.

Dave

I totally agree with 1361. But I'm relatively relaxed, because this had to be expected since the introduction of Lr 6/CC. I didn't believe Adobe's "promise" for continuing the perpetual licences model for a second. I'm still a bit surprised that they didn't even manage to keep it for 2 years though.
I'm still using 5.7.1 and after some time without updates, one begins to appreciate the fact that the software just works if you start it. No worrying about constant updates that might fix 2 bugs, but at the same introduce 5 new ones.
And despite the fashion to rant about Microsoft: In contrast to other OS's I can be sure that Lr 5 will still run on Windows in 10 years from now.

AndreasM said:

I can be sure that Lr 5 will still run on Windows in 10 years from now.

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You may well be right. I'm still running Office '97.

Hal P Anderson said:

You may well be right. I'm still running Office '97.

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Hal,

At some point, Microsoft drops support for old releases. That means that they will not patch security holes. and often it's the older releases of popular software that have the worst security exposures. Adobe Acrobat reader is a good example. Most people never upgrade that application, and hackers exploit the many vulnerabilities in older versions of Acrobat.

Microsoft in particular has gotten very serious about security, but I'm sure it was after the release of Office 97.
Phil

On the other hand, I'm not opening foreign files in the apps, so any security holes probably are irrelevant. Also, who would target 20-year-old software that is being run on probably 0.1% or less of the computers in the world?

Hal P Anderson said:

On the other hand, I'm not opening foreign files in the apps, so any security holes probably are irrelevant. Also, who would target 20-year-old software that is being run on probably 0.1% or less of the computers in the world?

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Hal,

I'll reply to you privately about these questions. Security through obscurity is not a useful approach.

AndreasM said:

I didn't believe Adobe's "promise" for continuing the perpetual licences model for a second. I'm still a bit surprised that they didn't even manage to keep it for 2 years though.

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To be fair, that was spring 2013 when Tom said they had no plans to discontinue perpetual. They made it 4.5 years, which is an eternity in technology years (they’re like dog years!)



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Victoria Bampton said:

To be fair, that was spring 2013 when Tom said they had no plans to discontinue perpetual. They made it 4.5 years, which is an eternity in technology years (they’re like dog years!)



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That was also a single release. Lr 6.
They never even make it to Lr 7. Which is not much a technical timeline.

Tim

tspear said:

That was also a single release. Lr 6.

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LR5 too. The statement was May 2013. LR5 was released in June.


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Victoria Bampton said:

LR5 too. The statement was May 2013. LR5 was released in June.

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Agree on the facts, disagree on how we are counting. ;
Lr 5 was out when Tom made the statement. So there was one release after, Lr 6. That is how I think of it.

Tim

tspear said:

Lr 5 was out when Tom made the statement.

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LOL There was an LR5 beta out, yes. They’d released the beta a month earlier. It didn’t release officially until a month after Tom’s blog.

But we really are splitting hairs!

Even if he had said "forever and with gold plated knobs", most people wouldn't have believed him, and the rest of us would have just thought him stupid for promising something that simply can't be promised. Indefinitely was at least honest!

johnbeardy said:

Even if he had said "forever and with gold plated knobs", most people wouldn't have believed him, and the rest of us would have just thought him stupid for promising something that simply can't be promised. Indefinitely was at least honest!

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He should have written 'We have no plans to ...'. Then everybody understands that this is subject to change.

Victoria Bampton said:

To be fair, that was spring 2013 when Tom said they had no plans to discontinue perpetual. They made it 4.5 years

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Adobe (Tom) had an obligation to their customer base to correct that 2013 statement at the point when it was no longer true. Obviously this "no plans to discontinue perpetual" statement changed well before last week because Adobe did not suddenly decide to discontinue perpetual just before the MAX conference. To discontinue the perpetual without correcting that statement is another example as to why Adobe has lost trust of their customers. To discontinue perpetual coincident with the release of LR7 Classic is also another reason for customers to be skeptical of anything Adobe says. If LR6 perpetual had been discontinued 6 months ago, customers would have been not so disappointed in LR7 Classic/LRCC announcement

Would have been nice if they offered the subs plan on the basis that after a set period, 12/18months of subs say , you were able to keep a fully functioning copy of LR, fixed , update wise , at the point you stopped paying the subs.
That with the ability to re-subscribe at any later date on the same basis.