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The reason subscriptions are not such a great idea
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Posted by Lb
Oct 23, 2019 at 08:42 PM
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.
Posted by NickG
Oct 23, 2019 at 10:08 PM
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.
Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 24, 2019 at 12:10 AM
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.
Posted by Hugh
Oct 25, 2019 at 11:32 AM
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.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 28, 2019 at 09:30 AM
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.