P: Support for HEIC file format (Windows)

I second what Jason said. If it was purely a licensing issue, why wouldn't they tell us that?

At this point it's beyond farce. Sensei can edits your pictures for you, but LR can't read the file format used by the most popular camera on the planet. I never used Aperture but the effects of its demise (complacency) are still being felt.

For the record again, HEIC is not Apple's format, it's owned by the MPEG consortium. Google already added HEIC support to the new version of Android that's just hitting the street.

On licensing, Skylum (a challenger to Lightroom) added HEIC support earlier this year. It's true that we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but I'm skeptical that the less expensive Skylum could afford to license HEIC but Adobe can't for Lightroom.

"why Adobe should be open and actively communicating with their customers"

Agreed, they're not very good at it.

Licensing may be a part of the problem here (and if so, shame on Apple), but this speculation is exactly why Adobe should be open and actively communicating with their customers. Their customers are clearly frustrated and upset with the lack of HEIC support. If Adobe makes a good case for why this isn’t easy for them, a percentage will be unreasonable, but the majority of the community will engage in the dialogue and be reasonable. Silence and not engaging with your customers is a guaranteed way to lose their support.

The licensing terms for Photoshop may not be the same as for the other products. And the cost of the license may make sense for Photoshop's business model (high effective revenue per photo processed) but not LR's (low effective revenue per photo processed).   

But without access to inside information, we can only speculate, and licensing may or may not be the bottleneck.

The Photoshop and ACR support indicates Adobe has access to a suitable library for reading HEIC and has accepted the licensing terms and fees on their other products.

"Adobe implemented the format already in ACR!!!!"

To build on David Sanger's reply, just because Adobe has a license for Photoshop and ACR on the desktop doesn't necessarily mean the license applies to LR CC Mobile,  LR CC Desktop, or LR Classic.

Nobody wants to save HEIC in the Lightroom. We want just import and edit them, then save to JPEG.

Lightroom and Photoshop are different kinds of products.

Lightroom is a cataloging and editing program. You can only edit files imported into your catalog. You can't import HEIC files into your catalog so you can't edit them. The mobile version of Lightroom gets a JPEG copy of the HEIC file and adds that to the catalog, and that's what you can edit.

Photoshop is just an editing program. You can open a HEIC file into Photoshop's workspace but to save changes you have to save-as-a-copy in a supported format (PSD, JPEG, TIFF etc). HEIC is not supported as a file format.

I have no reason to disagree with my source at Adobe's statement on licensing problems.

And there's this:

"But to use HEIC, makers of software, processors and phones must  jump through a lot of hoops to license patents. That's not just complicated and expensive. It also means HEIC will have trouble succeeding on the web: patent barriers are antithetical to the web's open nature."

Sure John, let's keep the facts right: this is no issue with licensing - Adobe implemented the format already in ACR!!!!