Licence cost in a simple case

[pierrehuber]

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

[Leo Kanel]

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.

[ASWC]

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]

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

[Leo Kanel · Accepted solution]

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

[pierrehuber]

thank you so much Leo for this very clear answer ...

It is so complicated to have clear status with Adobe Air 🙂

Pierre

[zwetan_uk]

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

[Leo Kanel]

Did you even read his question? Start reading the topic from the top. Each question and each reply. Or is it your need to be correct so big you can't read proper english?

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

Pierre literally asked how much would it cost if upgrade.

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

As i mentioned above, AIR 32 is going to EOL. This is stated by Adobe not me. Harman is taking over in an effort to release new SDKs but we still don't know if they have a plan to do it for 1 release or 5 years or whatever.

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?

If this is a personal question, I had signed with Harman, long before they even went public with the announcement, so please go lecture some1 else.

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

It is nothing. I said it multiple times to the topics where people were nagging about the pricing.

[hferreira80]

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.

[Leo Kanel]

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.

[zwetan_uk]

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]

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

[ASWC]

Leo is correct, maybe you did not read his post correctly, AIR 32 is EOL since as of NOW it will receive only "basic" update and will stop receiving any update as of 2020. After that it will be available to use "at your own risks" which might be fine for indy developers but for companies it will be unprofessional to offer to a customer base.

Anyone with an AIR product that is supposed to last a few years at least will have eventually to stop using AIR 32 and move to AIR33 and above (and pay the fees). Of course you would say "no, they won't have to, they can use AIR32 forever", but that's only true if you don't care about your app's users and don't care to let them deal with the security risks.