So a walled garden is good if its one company, and bad if its another? Be fair.
Exactly. Apple takes a 30% tax and one says anything?
Adobe's 9% Flash tax
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed: Personal Anecdote I made a $15,000 software purchase a few years ago (A bunch of copies of CS5 Master) and the same day I called for support because it was not running well on our brand new machines. I was told "Sorry sir you have to pay $79 to talk to a technician because you use a server (Level two Escalation)" Me: I just purchased $15,000 of software and I have to pay to talk to someone who may or may not…
$79 is half of a percent of what you just spent on that software. While I agree that charging you is disappointing in principle, it's odd to fume over a penny when you just spent $150.
This reminds me of people who aren't willing to drive across town to save $250 on a $15000 car purchase, but who make sure to buy their groceries when they are on sale to save money ...
Just because you recently spent $15,000 doesn't mean the next $80 are worth less.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#33> In this case, even if you created the SWF yourself (using tools like haxe), you'd still have to pay the tax. Can that actually be legally enforced? I assume this tax would be part of the TOS for using an authoring tool. A consumer has to agree to the TOS for using/downloading the Flash client. But if I want to put up an SWF file I built without Adobe tools... who can legally stop me? Unless there's some kind of enc…
Welcome to the new world of proprietary software. If you're running on someone else's APIs, and there is an incentive to charge you for it, they probably will. When you buy your computer/phone/tablet you are not purchasing hardware and software to use as you please, you are purchasing access to a "platform" that can reach into your computer and make decisions based on not-your self interest.
NEW world of proprietary software?
Proprietary software has been around for a long time, young Padawan. And for all that time, using it has meant knowing that the platform owner could step in at any time and ream^H^H^H^H"monetize" you.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#34Still, the $50K limit and 3D/memory-specific technology seems like there is only a handful of companies that will ever fulfill these conditions... and Adobe surely has a list of exactly who they are. So this is a very targeted policy that will never apply to 99.99% of us. Is this an accurate assessment?
> Still, the $50K limit and 3D/memory-specific technology seems like there is only a handful of companies that will ever fulfill these conditions... and Adobe surely has a list of exactly who they are. So this is a very targeted policy that will never apply to 99.99% of us. > Is this an accurate assessment? No. If you want to create a 3D game using Unity and deploy to Flash, for example, you will need to pay the 9%.…
You can of course make a Unity game and publish for the Unity web player. There's plenty of precedent for it these days.
You might want to export to Flash if you're going the licensing/sponsorship route ala Armor Games, Kongregate etc but there's not a ton of demand for the 3d stuff anyway.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#35I think there's also a secondary explanation.
There is a huge potential for security exploits in 3d code. Drivers are optimized for performance and glitches will likely allow malicious code.
Forcing developers who use these features to sign their code gives Adobe a way to police exploits.
In fact, look at how soon the cut off date is. A researcher has probably sent them a proof of concept exploit. Adobe's solution is to disable the feature for most developers.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#36> this violates the fundmental openness of the SWF format Since when has the SWF format had "fundamental openness"? It's the exact opposite.
Considering the spec is open and anybody can make a SWF from any program, or use any program to parse and execute a SWF...isn't that the definition of "openness"?
It's Adobe's tools that aren't free or open.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#37Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#38So a walled garden is good if its one company, and bad if its another? Be fair.
Exactly. Apple takes a 30% tax and one says anything?
Google charges the same 30%:
http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/a...
However, this isn't an apt comparison to what Adobe's doing. Apple, Google, Amazon, etc provide the infrastructure, hosting, payment processing, and the integration into the device. Adobe is providing none of this, yet is still claiming a piece of the action.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#39So a walled garden is good if its one company, and bad if its another? Be fair.
Operating a device app store with all the bandwidth and infrastructure that's involved is an entirely different creature than adding features to an API.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#40So i would have to pay more if I become more successful? Even if the new revenue had nothing to do with the api im licensing? I see no fairness in this whatsoever.
If my game makes 60k one year, then 300k the next year because I poured money into marketing, development, new content, better experience, etc.... why should adobe get more money? Especially if none of the new growth had anything to do with the licensing. This is so insane... Why would anyone agree to this?