You just have to feel sorry for all those Adobe users in Venezuela:

https://tidbits.com/2019/10/09/adobe-cuts-service-to-users-in-venezuela/

That’s why so many of us here are trying to move away from subscription apps - yes, even when we love them.

Cheers,
Bill

I don't think anyone here is "moving away from subscription apps" because of what's happening in Venezuela.

Venezuela's government has long accused of torture, persecuting its political rivals, it's been shunned by more than 50 nations, it's in the middle of an exodus of 5 million of its citizens amidst rampant inflation (consumer prices rose 52.2% in September, up from 34.6% in August and 19.4% in July), and the economy is melting down under repressive, and plausibly illegitimate, Maduro regime.

Complaining about subscriptions seems a little off the mark under these circumstances. Besides, people there are just pirating anyway.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-adobe/venezuela-designers-turn-to-piracy-after-adobe-announces-it-will-cut-service-idUSKBN1WN25L

Venezuela is one of the best working democracies with less voter fraud then the USA or UK.
Bad for imperialists and upper class that the poor still are not convinced to vote for
the CIA bloodhounds they run as opposition to Maduro.

It's only US propaganda and the 50 countries that follow are the usual US Poodle with it's strategy
of terror against socialists and it's despise for the poor normal people. The economy
would be working without the US american terrorists and their trade terror to all the
people south their borders.

First the US has stolen billions of venezuelan goverment money (aka freezing) - just like nothing.
Now private companies try to do the it.

PS: Adobe will withdraw licenses from Chile too ... soon. But surely never from Turkey, Saudi Arabia or China.

A little corner of the world without politics, culture, or opinion about anything other than outliner software is welcome.

I bailed out of Adobe, but seriously miss PhotoShop and Audition.

Paul Korm wrote:

A little corner of the world without politics, culture, or opinion about
anything other than outliner software is welcome.

I am feeling the same way. I know there are important issues going on in the world, but there are places to discuss them with all of the passion and intensity they deserve. I am hoping our "little corner" can continue be a respite from issues not related to outliner-related software.

-Ken

Yeah guys, it's not a politics forum. Cut the crap, please.

Back to the topic. Subscription model is pushed down on customers by the business for mainly one reason: money. It's the way to generate constant guaranteed revenue. Yes, subscription services may appear to be more convenient to the customers, but using them carries certain risks and drawbacks. For instance:

1. The service can be terminated at any time on behalf of the owners.
2. You generally, can't opt-out of the changes to the service if you don't like them.
3. There's constant privacy risk to the customers' data.

That's why, after being burnt once, for the purpose of PIM I'm leaning towards off-line standalone applications. I want to have full control of my data. I don't want deal with the problem a closing service (or dealing with new changes I don't like), which means somehow exporting the data, finding another service, and importing the data there. I don't want to fear for the privacy of my data. I don't want my life to depend on some remote services I have no control of. Standalone software doesn't have these issues. You can stick with a version you like and keep using it for a long time.

No one wants to discuss politics here or read about anybody else's indignant pontifications (righteous or otherwise) about same. You're not going to convince anyone else of your views, and all you'll accomplish is to drive people away. The subscription-based model is a valid topic - but I could not care less about why Adobe is doing whatever it's doing in Venezuela.

Developers need working capital, if only to get started. Lenders and providers of capital - the bank, the man next door, Aunt Agatha - need predictability. As is so often said, they hate surprises. Compared with one-off charges dependent on the development cycle, subs provide more (though of course not total) predictability.

They may deter buyers. But someone here once pointed out that in a slightly different industry it had been estimated that even if subs deter 80 per cent of previous buyers, with subs the businesses can still keep their revenues stable and make money. So I can see why some developers are turning to subs.

I can also see why many consumers of apps don't like them: if we buy apps at the same volume as before, we'll pay more, probably quite a lot more. The situation where I have three very similar writing apps or four equally usable PIMS or a huge bunch of seldom-used utilities on my hard disk - and quite a lot of fun playing with each one - is in the future unlikely to be so financially viable (although mitigated by the possibility of inexpensively trialling sub-based apps for, say, a couple of months and then discarding those I don't like).

Having been on both sides of the producer/consumer divide in small and medium-sized businesses (though not in app development), I have sympathy with each.

Paul Korm wrote:

A little corner of the world without politics, culture, or opinion about
anything other than outliner software is welcome.

I thought the same reading this thread. I enjoy reading a few comic strips online that used to be my little haven from the news. Now you can't even have a bird complaining about the diner food without 30 comments below it, both attacking the other side politically. I'd hate to see this forum becoming that way as this is one of the few I look forward to reading daily.

It needs to work for both sides or it's not sustainable. If it doesn't work for developers, they fold. If it doesn't work for consumers, they bail.



Hugh wrote:

Having been on both sides of the producer/consumer divide in small and
medium-sized businesses (though not in app development), I have sympathy
with each.

Alex wrote:

That's why, after being burnt once, for the purpose of PIM I'm leaning
towards off-line standalone applications. I want to have full control of
my data. I don't want deal with the problem a closing service (or
dealing with new changes I don't like), which means somehow exporting
the data, finding another service, and importing the data there.

Bad stuff can happen to an off-line standalone application as well (data loss due to software or hardware failure or theft).

Ultimately it doesn't matter if it's online or offline, in both cases one needs to back it up somehow and have it in human-readable form.

This is what I like about the likes of WorkFlowy and Dynalist. You can have automatic daily backups and the export format is simple enough that your data can be easily re-imported or even edited manually, as it's human-readable.

The Adobe story is still interesting though. If you have a design-related business and your business model was based on the Adobe Creative Cloud service, then it could be hugely damaging when it's just turned off at the drop of the hat like that.

I'm thinking that Bill's post which kicked off this thread was something of a leg-pull. Perhaps the 'The" in the title is the giveaway.

Hi @Hugh and @Alex,

Wow, I wasn’t expecting a relatively innocuous remark about the dangers of subscription services to arouse such political furore.

But my point, while not intended to be political, was intended to be serious: this is Adobe we’re talking about, purveyors of software that most professionals working in graphics or DTP pretty much HAVE to use (a bit like MS-Office in the general commercial space).

So when Adobe literally just switches off its service to subscribers in Venezuela, thousands of professionals suddenly become unable to work and must frantically rush about looking for something, anything, that will enable them to keep leading their lives, making an income, raising their families and so on.

Whatever you think about Venezuela’s political situation, that’s a drastic outcome. And a useful warning about the dangers of subscription services, especially when entire industries are dominated by a single supplier.

I think that’s quite hairy enough, without bringing politics into the equation.

My first subscription software was when Evernote changed from it's brilliant first iterations to its current "let me explain you why you don't need this and why we're not doing it" versions.

What sold me was that the application is local and remains functional without a subscription. The data is local and remains your own without a subscription.

TheBrain has an even better subscription model where you can stop your subscription at any time while the version of the software you have at that time remains yours, including all non-free features.

So for me it's data first (I want to have it local), then availability of the application once I stop paying.

I don't necessarily find the subscription model a bad one, especially for developers, but just as with news (1) software subscriptions don't just compete with other software, it competes with *all* subscription services: newspapers, music, video, games, etc. There's only so much "pocket money" I allot myself every month to pay subscriptions.

1: https://mondaynote.com/how-facebook-and-google-could-disrupt-the-subscription-model-for-news-d94e7aa7fcb6

I agree, ruudhein, the “you can have it as it was when you stopped paying your subscription” model is actually quite effective. Agenda (on macOS/iOS) uses a similar model.

But Adobe? Ahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, I’m clearly anticipating Halloween ;-)

FYI: It appears that they are now able to restore subscriptions: https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-continues-digital-media-access-in-venezuela/ .

--Ken

It's a great day to be a Venezuelan.

Ken wrote:

FYI: It appears that they are now able to restore subscriptions:
https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-continues-digital-media-access-in-venezuela/
.

--Ken