Inducement To Piracy, Adobe Style 272
S Vulpy writes "A post at the Social Science Research Council's website talks about how piracy greases the wheels of the Adobe Creative Suite marketplace by making it easier to deal with Adobe breaking compatibility between versions. Quoting: '... such incompatibility doesn’t involve exotic functionality, just straight text layout into columns and boxes. The kind of stuff that has been core functionality of publishing software since the early 1990s. Translate this dilemma to Brazil or Russia, where incomes are a fraction that of the US and you get a very simple outcome: massive piracy of Adobe products. In fact, go through this process in the last month of a 4-year project on a deadline and one could understand becoming extremely sympathetic to such a perspective. This, as we’ve argued, is not a defect of the Adobe business model, it is the business model.'"
Re:This is why I have given up on Adobe (Score:5, Informative)
This. Of course, they're be the usual whining about how Gimp is supposedly unintuitive (i.e., it's not set up exactly like Photoshop), or how it doesn't support color separation for print (even though most people are just using it for web graphics).
And Inkspace gets better with each version, it's already much more usable (I think) than Gimp.
If you're a small company, just starting out, and you're not locked into Photoshop for some reason, there's no reason to start producing files in that format. If you're starting up a web-based company, and need to produce some graphics for your website, just create it in Inkscape [inkscape.org].
I shall keep snagging them (Score:1, Informative)
BTW, Gimp is good for 4chan pics, but Photoshop is good for everything else.
Re:Wasn't piracy always a part of Adobe's business (Score:4, Informative)
95%, if not more, of people using Photoshop don't need it. We tried for a major push for Adobe Elements at one place I worked at, but a lot of people wanted Photoshop just because it was the "grown up"/Real product.
Re:Vendor lock-in .... (Score:4, Informative)
That may work if you're a nerd living in your mother's basement. However, back in the real world, people collaborate, and that's when network effects come in: when your customers send you files in the latest format, you need to be able to read them.
Don't upgrade. if you have to, downsave documents (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, how hard can it be to not upgrade. If you're working on a huge project in-house, don't upgrade your software half-way through, unless you're prepared to update all copies of it.
InDesign, the software mentioned in the article, will automatically upgrade the format of the document when opened in a new version with no warning. This can be a problem. It also does allow you to downsave by one version (CS5 can save as InDesign Interchange format, which will open in CS4. CS4 to INX for CS3).
If you have the Creative Suite, you really should be on volume licensing - even if it's just one copy. It's not a well known fact, but individuals can purchase volume licensing and there is no minimum buy-in to their TLP licensing program. Licensing copies are cheaper than retail box copies, you can re-download your installers if you lose them, Adobe keep a record of your serial number/proof of purchase if you loose it or are audited and you can purchase maintenance if you want to keep your copies up-to-date for less than the regular upgrade cost.
Also, with licensing, if you purchase a copy of, say, CS5, but you're running all CS4 licenses in your studio, you can install a copy of CS4 instead using your CS4 volume license serial number.
There's no arguing that the Creative Suite is expensive, but if you're smart about it, you can keep the costs down a bit.