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pierrehuber
pierrehuber
Participant
June 24, 2019
Answered

Licence cost in a simple case

  • June 24, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 2675 views

Hello all Adobe Air lovers ...

I have a simple case (not a real case but it is just to make me an idea about Adobe Air licensing)

A software company with 5 developpers, developping only one application with Adobe Air captive runtime for windows

This company have 20 customers with 10 users each of this application (200 users total)

This company sell this application as a service 3 000 € a year by user (total : 3 000 x 10 users x 20 customers = 600 000 € each year)

This company have decided to use Adobe Air SDK 32 and will never upgrade it

Is anybody can help me about how this company is supposed to pay to Adobe for using SDK and the captive runtime of Air ?

Thank you for your help ...

Pierre

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Leo Kanel

That would be 10k dollars / year or 1.6% of the yearly revenue.

3 replies

L
Leo Kanel
Inspiring
June 24, 2019

Well it is not actually AIR as we know it is heading to EOL. 32 is the last version developed and distributed by Adobe.

Adobe failed to meet the requirements of Android so they gave the hot ball to Harman, who is charging based on a 3 tier plan in order to continue to support AIR. So the tiers are Free for really small revenues / developer, then $200 / year, then $1000 / year and final $2k / year.

They also said that if you exceed the 1k / month, you can have a discount but it is not defined.

And that was a recap of the situation of AIR in 2019.

Z
zwetan_uk
Inspiring
June 24, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Leo+Kanel  wrote

Well it is not actually AIR as we know it is heading to EOL. 32 is the last version developed and distributed by Adobe.

Adobe failed to meet the requirements of Android so they gave the hot ball to Harman, who is charging based on a 3 tier plan in order to continue to support AIR. So the tiers are Free for really small revenues / developer, then $200 / year, then $1000 / year and final $2k / year.

They also said that if you exceed the 1k / month, you can have a discount but it is not defined.

And that was a recap of the situation of AIR in 2019.

How AIR is heading to EOL when HARMAN is taking over its development?

How is it OK for you to get paid when you develop software but others have to do it for free when you use their software?

a $2k license per year compared to a developer salary is literally nothing, not even the price of their laptop/desktop dev machine

    pierrehuber
    pierrehuberAuthor
    Participant
    June 25, 2019

    Hello Zwetan and  thank you for your contribution to my question.

    Your return on experience is very important to me, you confirm what I thought and the stability of AIR 2.6 for Linux is really impressive.

    Pierre

      A
      ASWC
      Inspiring
      June 24, 2019

      That should be 0, but AIR 32 will stop receiving updates as of 2020 and will get (quote) "basic security updates" from now on, so it's free but not the best for your customer security wise.

      pierrehuber
      pierrehuberAuthor
      Participant
      June 24, 2019

      Thank you Leo and ASWC for your replies ...

      And have you an idea of the cost if the company will decide to use next versions of Adobe Air with this simple case ?

      Pierre

      H
      hferreira80
      Inspiring
      June 25, 2019

      https://forums.adobe.com/people/Leo+Kanel  wrote

      That would be 10k dollars / year or 1.6% of the yearly revenue.

      no, that would be exactly 0 dollar per year

      the OP mentioned a Windows AIR application

      A software company with 5 developpers, developping only one application with Adobe Air captive runtime for windows

      ..

      This company have decided to use Adobe Air SDK 32 and will never upgrade it

      the licensing cost only apply from AIR SDK 33 and only when you publish for Android

      now assuming a future AIR SDK 34 can publish for desktop target and so Windows
      the licensing is based on developer seat, so you just need 1 license to publish your app


      at 600K revenue that's 1x $1999 and so 0,3% of your revenue

      and that is basically your choice
      eg. you are not forced to upgrade the SDK version

      "as is" AIR SDK 32 can literally be used for the next few years, let's say 5
      security updates mainly concern the Flash player, hardly a concern for the AIR runtime or SDK

      to this day, 10 years later, I can still publish AIR 2.6 on Linux

      what may make you want to upgrade to a future AIR SDK 34 etc.
      is if HARMAN update the AIR runtime with new features for the desktop you want to use

      and there, either 0,3% or 1,6% of your revenue is a drop in the bucket
      or simply compare the price it would cost your company to develop the same new feature within an ANE
      with your own time and dev team


      zwetan_uk  wrote

      I can still publish AIR 2.6 on Linux

      It is true that you can compile to AIR 2.6 on Linux.

      I did, my self, that test with an application with over 2 millions of lines of code with 0 errors and without change a single line of code!

      The exactly the same source code from Windows and macOS can run out-of-the-box on Linux (build without captive runtime of course).

      However, wait a minute.

      Just because it can run doesn't mean it's a viable option nowadays.

      It's just super-ultra slow.

      Everything is in super slow motion and it's a business application and not a game.

      It works but it's not a option for a long time.

      AIR improved it's performance incredible along the years.

      So, I guess (and it's my guess that's is as good as yours) that if can run nowadays and for what I had read so far, Harman is speciallist on this area, bring Linux again it's a very probably option.

      When I say bring Linux again, it's not change the letter 2.6 to 34 or 35, it's have much better performance (at least comparing to the super dated 2.6) and run on captiva runtime.

      But on the case of AIR 32 for Windows, yeah, may be it can be viable in 5 years without updates (I'm still using AIR 30 without issues).

      On case of macOS, I'm not so sure because of new processors.

        L
        Leo Kanel
        Inspiring
        June 24, 2019

        If you stick to AIR 32 you don't have to pay. AIR32 will continue as is, and also get security maintenance updates, until its EOL on 2020. After that you may have to update.

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