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OT: Time to say goodbye?
For the last several weekd the “other” debate forum has grown silent. There have been no sightings of angry village people with torches and pitchforks. Even the intoxicated laced rants and diatribes have gone absent. In fact it is so quiet even the crickets have moved on.
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14 Replies
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There’s another “debate” forum? I had to look…I didnt’ realize there was an Adobe CC debate forum.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
For me, it’s kinda over. I’ve made my decision and I won’t be using
Adobe unless they change their subscription only way of
doing business. But it’s working for them and seems to be good
for their business, so that’s not going to happen. Useless to really
complain about. Lots of business relationships go this route, as
what is in the best interests of one, is not in the best interests
of the other. You move on and they move on, and it is what it is.
No big deal, nothing personal, just both parties doing what is
best for them.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
And that’s the crux of why it has crickets. The CC debate was about the business model. You either liked it or you didn’t and made your decision accordingly. Not much to debate, since Adobe seems pretty solid in sticking with subscription.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Not much to debate, since Adobe seems pretty solid in sticking with subscription.
“That’s one way to put it. ????
I found that forum endlessly vexatious, I have to admit. On one hand, it quickly calcified into an unfortunately un-nuanced “yuh-huh”/’nuh-uh” that didn’t spark any great waves of insight, but the outrage burned 20 times hotter there (100 times hotter?) than ever burned here. I can’t even count how many trolls we had to send packing, and that most definitely includes folks on both sides of the debate. We also had more people choose to leave the COW altogether under their own steam over those fights than any issue I’ve ever seen.
Absolutely the opposite of anything I’d hope to see, but shutting it down by fiat is definitely not our way. To the extent that there was (or, on any topic, IS) substance to debate, our policy has always been to let it play out within our very tiny handful of rules (generally distilled down to: no name calling.)
Certainly ZERO inclination to shield Adobe from the consequences of their decisions — and to their credit, they never once mentioned it, not then, not since. But that’s explicitly been our policy too: advertiser or not, customers get to hold your feet to the fire. We’re just here to make sure it follows the same rules that apply to anyone else. I can assure you that other advertisers have asked us to step in for much less over our 22 years now. I can also assure you that none of them are still around. ????
The unfortunately meager sustenance gleaned from the fury in that forum often felt like MY failure as much as anything else, but also kind of a personal embarrassment. I wasn’t always at my best there, either as a poster with one opinion no more or less valid than anyone else’s, borne out of my own 40-year stint in this business (dang, I just had to doublecheck that math — YES, OVER 40 YEARS), or an admin — and I remain grateful to the folks who gave me a lot of latitude in speaking my own piece(s) without imputing any official weight to it. Or indeed, most of the time, any weight at all. ????
Generally speaking though, 6-ish months since the last regular activity seems about right. I was actually surprised to find anything THAT recent. Saying that it may be “time to say goodbye” is probably more effort than actually needs to be expended. There’s not really anything there anymore. There’s really nothing to say at all.
It’s also likely to me that if there IS anything to say coming out of NAB, it will more likely happen here, and be more productive for it. ????
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Well put, Tim. It appears that the naysayers (anti-subscription)have realized that Adobe is not going to change direction, and the prosayers are happy with the subscription model, and have moved on. Why shout your opinion to an echo chamber when the wall is the only one listening?
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I wish I was stoned.
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I’ve checked back there from time to time over the past couple months, and part of me is a bit sad that it’s not active any more. But I agree with Oliver, it was all about the business model, and for better or worse Adobe isn’t changing it, nor would one expect them to, as it has been a very successful move for them. The predictions of a mass exodus of creatives certainly haven’t come to pass and it’s been 5 years since CC, and thus in that respect CC is now the norm if you use anything from Adobe.
I do often wonder how much (if at all) the subscription oriented approach of other industries has eased Adobe’s move? Have services like Netflix and Spotify made the idea of having access to more content but not owning it had an easier one to get on board with in respect for software?
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[Jason Watson] “I do often wonder how much (if at all) the subscription oriented approach of other industries has eased Adobe’s move? Have services like Netflix and Spotify made the idea of having access to more content but not owning it had an easier one to get on board with in respect for software”
Not the same at all.
You stop paying Netflix or Spotify, you don’t get separated from your ability to use or adapt the Intellectual Property you’ve created and should therefore own.
You just lose access to somebody else’s IP.
Again, not the same at all.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “You stop paying Netflix or Spotify, you don’t get separated from your ability to use or adapt the Intellectual Property you’ve created and should therefore own. You just lose access to somebody else’s IP. Again, not the same at all.”
I understand and sympathize with the point you’re trying to make here, but I think that this way of stating the issue with Creative Cloud is confusing. See here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/376/989The poster in that thread was asking if he could ever access his project files again if he stopped and restarted a Creative Cloud subscription. I think that misunderstanding flourishes because of explanations of Creative Cloud like the above.
If you stop subscribing to Creative Cloud, you lose the ability to open Adobe Creative Cloud applications. Period. You do not lose access to your source footage, your finished output, any interchange files you’ve created, or even the ability to open your Adobe files with a different CC license.
Not being able to launch Premiere when you stop subscribing is significant and anyone looking at Creative Cloud should consider those consequences, but it is not at all the same as being “separated from your ability to use or adapt the Intellectual Property you’ve created and should therefore own.”
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Jason Watson] “I do often wonder how much (if at all) the subscription oriented approach of other industries has eased Adobe’s move? Have services like Netflix and Spotify made the idea of having access to more content but not owning it had an easier one to get on board with in respect for software?”
I don’t think I would attribute it to Netflix and Spotify, but I do think the think the general demise of the traditional ‘buy a perpetual license and upgrade for a discount down the road’ business model over the last decade or so has helped Adobe’s choice with CC go from shocking to normal. Ad supported, freemium (micro-transactions), and/or subscription is the direction things have moved (hardware-locked like Apple and BlackMagic is there too, but it’s not as common). Apple has been a primary driving force behind this thanks the ‘no paid upgrade’ policies in both the iOS App Store and the Mac App store (as well as no longer charing of OS upgrades). Customers quickly got used to paying once (or paying nothing) and getting free updates for life which obviously puts software developers in a crunch (hence the rapid rise off non-traditional business models).
The fluid nature of business models and consumer acceptance is interesting. For example, 10yrs ago or so, not too long after the iTMS store started up, Jobs mentioned that no one wanted to rent their music. And at the time he was correct. Streaming sites like Rhapsody were struggling compared to the iTMS (and even CD sales) yet today streaming music is the growth vector and digital downloads are the new (if less successful) CD.
So what changed? Technology did. With the rise of feature phones and smart phones streaming music became portable where as before it was mainly tethered to your computer. People like to listen to music on the go so it was that missing ability, not the rental model itself , that was the hurdle that needed clearing.
[Bill Davis] “Not the same at all.
You stop paying Netflix or Spotify, you don’t get separated from your ability to use or adapt the Intellectual Property you’ve created and should therefore own.
You just lose access to somebody else’s IP.
Again, not the same at all.”
The business model is totally the same. A subscription is a subscription. You offer a subscription plan. Adobe offers a subscription plan. Apple offers a subscription plan. Blizzard offers a subscription plan. GenArts offers a subscription plan. Microsoft offers a subscription plan. Vimeo offers a subscription plan. LA Times offers a subscription plan. Your ISP offers a subscription plan. Etc., etc., etc.,. They are all subscriptions to different things, but the subscription business model is the same.
With regards to owning the IP, that depends on the situation does it not? Work for Hires, for example, do not own their work. For the area of the industry I work in I cannot think of a time that I wasn’t in a work for hire situation. The producer, director, production company, whatever, is the owner, not me. Even though I’ve created it someone else owns it.
With regards to getting “separated from your ability to use or adapt the Intellectual Property you’ve created and should therefore own.” What about when you rent post/production gear? Or when a client hires (aka ‘rents’) you for a job? After the agreed upon term/duration is up what happens? Do you get to access to the rental gear indefinitely free of charge because losing access to the gear means losing access to your IP? Does the client get access to you indefinitely free of charge since losing access to you means losing access to their IP?
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