from Hacker News

Adobe Cuts Perpetual License for Elements Down to Just Three Years

by asimops on 10/5/24, 1:22 PM with 37 comments

• by ksec on 10/6/24, 2:19 AM

  I was trying to get this to Front page multiple times but didn't work. We are going full force into subscription model without a monthly or yearly payment. And I imagine many other companies will follow the same path.

• by timnetworks on 10/7/24, 3:32 AM

  Adobe is the Boeing of software suites.

  Desktop class, you can render AI stuff locally on a $1,500 computer. Phones and tablets are building in neural processors. That will change. But the licensing thing won't change back.

  Glad Adobe waited for the founder to pass before doing all this junk, it'd probably kill him.

• by daemin on 10/6/24, 10:25 AM

  I guess that if they wanted to charge extra for the AI features then people wouldn't want to pay them for it. So instead of buying a perpetual licence with 3 years of updates included, and having to pay extra for AI features, they decided to just kill the software in 3 years.

  I wonder how the justification for all this will go when people will have enough NPU processing power in their computers to do these operations and not need to have the work done on a server?

• by DrSiemer on 10/6/24, 6:52 AM

  Not a fan of ownership changing to rent, but it's almost inevitable that these kind of products will turn into AI cloud services now. All that server power is not cheap.

  I'd still prefer a fixed perpetual license with a usage based fee for AI features though.

• by dijit on 10/7/24, 8:27 AM

  I asked the question "what can we do to get off of Adobe" and was met with a resounding: "NOTHING" from the marketing team especially. So many of their assets are vendor locked to Adobe products, almost our entire asset library and not to mention the cost of retraining.

  Adobe is fully aware they have the industry by the balls. I doubt that this inertia can be curbed no matter what they do, including it seems granting themselves a license to everything you open using their products; which while a direct violation of our partnerships: has been deemed acceptable by my CEO because it's "impossible that nobody else is having this problem" and "we are not the vanguard of defending IP law"...

  ... If I'm not willing to be the "someone" who stands up, then it's more likely that "no one" will be that "someone" either.

• by chii on 10/6/24, 10:33 AM

  It's like the opposite of the disney perpetual copyright. Every few years, their copyright that is about to expire gets extended, so in effect it's actually perpetual (yes, i know some of it has recently managed to be expired...)

• by lovegrenoble on 10/7/24, 8:15 AM

  No more Adobe, happy with 'Affinity photo' already 6 years for now: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

• by inatreecrown2 on 10/6/24, 4:43 AM

  I am sure they made their calculations, but I think that this will cut into Adobe's business.