Adobe's 9% Flash tax • Hacker News Board

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#71

Post by donteflon » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 11:34 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #46

"I think it's pretty peculiar that Adobe would announce such a regressive tax,... even if you created the SWF yourself (using tools like haxe), you'd still have to pay the tax." I disagree it is 'pretty peculiar', I think it is 'pretty obvious' why Adobe has done this. After years of growth and dividends and success, they have gone through a decade of sideways motions where they are resorting various and sundry cost…

Adobe's last decade was far from bad, it was actually pretty great[1], and they did it under fire from both Apple and Microsoft. Not only that, Microsoft Expression Studio and Silverlight went nowhere, Apple's Apperture and Final Cut are taking a beating in the marketplace from Lightroom and Premiere, Macromedia was acquired, and Quark lost its de facto DTP monopoly unable to compete with an application Adobe wrote from scratch (it's now at around 25% of the market and still diving).

Also, Adobe didn't declare Flash dead, they just discontinued the development of the mobile browser plugin (which no one was actually targeting). Flash on mobile devices is alive and well and running on Air better than ever, on both the iOS[2] and Android[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems#Revenue [2] http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2011/09/flash-based-mac... [3] http://blogs.aerys.in/jeanmarc-leroux/2012/02/02/air-3-2-sta...

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#72

Post by joezydeco » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:53 AM UTC

adamman wrote: post #25

joezydeco wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, all the Facebook game developers.

Very few Facebook game developers use flashes premium features, so this royalty fee won't apply to them.

I know quite a few groups developing Facebook games using Unity.

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#73

Post by ghshephard » Sun, Apr 01, 2012, 9:29 PM UTC

AgentConundrum wrote: post #50

ghshephard wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False comparison - You buy a new car once every 5-7 years. You buy groceries 2-3 times a week.

It's not a false comparison, and luckily I don't have to explain it, because this is covered in my personal favorite TED talk, "Dan Gilbert on our mistaken expectations".[1] It's a bit long for a TED talk, running for about half an hour, but I'd recommend at least reading the transcript if you can't watch the video. The relevant portion comes after Gilbert sets up a situation not unlike the one being discussed here.…

The reason people go to so much effort to save money on smaller purchases, is they make them so much more frequently. You make a $31k purchase once a decade, so saving $100 on that purchase is way down on the list of priorities - location is much more important if you are visiting the dealership for the next 10 years. Time and gas alone to go an extra 5 miles will add up to hundreds of dollars.

If i can save $100 every two-three months, with no downstream liability as a result (like the cost of taking my car the extra distance to the dealership) then I've profited $4000 over 10 years.

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#74

Post by samnm » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 1:04 AM UTC

justindocanto wrote: post #45

samnm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not too far from the 30% that Apple charges for App Store distribution... You are paying for the use of Adobe's Flash Player.

Two totally different things. Apple has a giant marketplace thats allows people to find your app by search or discovery, they distribute it, they host it, they manage the servers for the store, they keep it secure, they host the feedback, they have a massive customer base that they offer your app to in an easy to use marketplace, etc. etc. adobe is just unlocking a portion of an language/api essentially. Ive never he…

I'm a bit late to this comment but there's just one thing I want to say. I agree with everything you for the most part but Adobe is in effect charging for the distribution of their platform. For example if you built a game with Unity you could either publish on Unity's browser plugin or pay 9% to publish using Flash Player. What you're paying for in that instance is the fact that any user will most likely already have flash player installed and ready to go.