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Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

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Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power/electricity analogy here is what's really key - there will come a time when the ubiquity of being "online" will be the same as the ubiquity of "the power is on." It's so prevalent in modern society we really don't think about it. It took me a while to realize that this is where Google is headed with ChromeOS/Chromebooks. Ultimately, "applications/apps" will not exist, there will just be the web and all pers…

It's not awesome at all. It's the death of personal computing. What to use Photoshop? Pay a perpetual monthly fee forever, with no control over which version of the software you are using. Adobe jacked up the price this year for the new version despite a lack of new features? Tough, nothing you can do about it. It's either pay up or lose access. The new version is buggy? Tough luck. Want to modify any of the software…

I haven't used Photoshop (and will never subscribe to any Adobe software) in over a year because there are plenty of alternatives that meet my needs, and web/graphics design is my lively-hood.

Between Sketch, Pixelmator, and just designing in CSS/HTML I do not need Photoshop.

I haven't been hampered by DRM, subscriptions, or anything else with these apps/technologies and that is because personal computing is alive and well.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#172
post #70
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole point of the Cloud. To the business, it deleverages the customer's control and increase the latter's dependence on the former. Think about why Skype is no longer P2P. Think about how some Video/Audio formats are proprietary that you have use the same service or else you risk losing all your past recordings.

From what I gather, Skype moving to a centralized model is an effort to make it work better with mobile devices, where p2p/always-on is inefficient and power-hungry.

Mobile is the thin end of the wedge.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#173

All your pictures are belong to us. (From p. 117 of the EULA: ( http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/legal/licens... ) "All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Adobe and its suppliers.)

You're misunderstanding what that sentence means. In context:

3. Intellectual Property Ownership

The Software and any authorized copies that Customer makes are the intellectual property of and are owned by Adobe Systems Incorporated and its suppliers. The structure, organization, and source code of the Software are the valuable trade secrets and confidential information of Adobe Systems Incorporated and its suppliers. The Software is protected by law, including but not limited to the copyright laws of the United States and other countries, and by international treaty provisions. Except as expressly stated herein, this agreement does not grant Customer any intellectual property rights in the Software. All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Adobe and its suppliers.

The rights being referred to are rights that Adobe (and its suppliers) have in the software. Courts long ago decided that, absent specific wording to the contrary, implicit rights and obligations can be read into contracts. This type of specific wording tries to avoid that from happening.

I haven't read the rest of the document so I can't speak as to whether the EULA does indeed transfer/license your rights to Adobe, but if there is such a provision, this is not it.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just use free (as in freedom) software instead. If the last several decades have shown us anything, it's that the free software movement is excellent at creating some kinds of software (operating systems, development tolls, severs) and generally pretty bad at many other kinds of software (games, content creation software, etc).

The reason for this is that those kinds of software require lots of money to pay developers to work on them full time, because they aren't straightforward applications of the sort of thing you'd get in an engineering/computer science education. Recent years have suggested that "software as a service" is the only way to get this money due to rampant piracy. If the free software community doesn't like this state of aff…

Wait, which of those two (kernels/compilers/etc. or games/content/etc) are you suggesting have developers who work for free?

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#176
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you must understand that the intersection of people that want to run graphical manipulation software and have the time and expertise to work on the GIMP codebase is rather small? Sure, the Steve Wozniaks of the world have always had the ability to write their own GIMP plugins or whatever, and you're right: that hasn't changed. But there were a few decades there where the rest of the world could actually own co…

Even so, in this scenario lots of people will discover that GIMP is good enough and so its popularity will rise, interoperability may become better and more people will take an interest in working on it. Photoshop piracy was the worst thing that ever happened to the GIMP.

If your vision of how people can continue to own their data in the future relies on GIMP being improved to the point that's not unbearably painful to use, you're failing to reassure anyone.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#177
post #14

Well this is interesting. Their FAQ[0] contains some more information, but still does not explain everything. They say "however, instead of being installed on your local machine, it is running in a virtualized environment so can be accessed from any Chrome browser or Chromebook. Because this version of Photoshop is running in a virtualized environment, you open, save, export and recover files from/to your Google Driv…

"If network connectivity is lost, you will need to launch a new session."

As an Australian, I fear this is yet another one of those things we won't be able to use on our spotty 250KB/s connections.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not awesome at all. It's the death of personal computing. What to use Photoshop? Pay a perpetual monthly fee forever, with no control over which version of the software you are using. Adobe jacked up the price this year for the new version despite a lack of new features? Tough, nothing you can do about it. It's either pay up or lose access. The new version is buggy? Tough luck. Want to modify any of the software…

I dunno... all of this sounds like fearmongering and some of these things are perfectly analogous to the way stuff already works. For example: "Want to continue using SuperAwesomeApp? Too bad..." Want to continue using TwitPic? Too bad. Obsolescence happens, companies shut down, products go off the market and cease to be supported every day. This isn't new. If there's enough demand for an alternative, it will happen.…

> Obsolescence happens, companies shut down, products go off the market and cease to be supported every day. This isn't new.

Yet I can (and do) still run TextMate 1, OmniFocus 1, LineForm, NewsFire, Office:mac 2011 and Photoshop CS3 on my Mac. Even when it comes to the "cloud", I can still use Skype 4.x on my iPhone which doesn't force a shitty Windows Mobile interface down my throat. It's not that I mind paying for subscriptions, I just don't want my tools to be taken away while I am trying to get work done with them.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#180
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for this is that those kinds of software require lots of money to pay developers to work on them full time, because they aren't straightforward applications of the sort of thing you'd get in an engineering/computer science education. Recent years have suggested that "software as a service" is the only way to get this money due to rampant piracy. If the free software community doesn't like this state of aff…

Wait, which of those two (kernels/compilers/etc. or games/content/etc) are you suggesting have developers who work for free?

Free (as in freedom) software developers often write software that serves some purpose for themselves. That is, there are any number of people writing GPL software for...software development and similar things.

Consider the grandparent post again:

> If the last several decades have shown us anything, it's that the free software movement is excellent at creating some kinds of software (operating systems, development tolls, severs) and generally pretty bad at many other kinds of software (games, content creation software, etc).

This seems to suggest that, if the last several decades have shown us anything, free (as in freedom) software developers are more likely to be willing to write software used for software development, and not very likely to write high quality games or content creation software like Photoshop.

It's well known that those in the free software community are often not paid very well, if at all. Consider the problems OpenSSL has had getting funding, despite millions of people all over the world using it every day.

The people who _are_ writing Photoshop are very much in it for the money, and are taking every step they can to ensure a steady income stream. Look at how Adobe is now trying to rent people Photoshop instead of giving them their own copy.

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