Does anyone else suspect Adobe doesn't give a damn about its paying customers?

[pault2182399]

I don't like posting negative stuff, but I'm reaching the end of my tether with Adobe and their update protocol - it's actually getting in the way of my teaching and my business and it's unreasonable!

Adobe seem to have gone from being a brilliant, innovative organisation dedicated to helping and supporting creatives with some outstanding tools, to being a greedy corporate which appear not to give a toss about anything but its own self-serving business model.

Why am I so angry?

Funny you should ask...

I teach design at a university (yes, using Adobe Creative Suite) and I also produce a national magazine.

But when I opened up for work today, I found all the fonts which I'd used for the last edition of the magazine - all of which I'd previously activated with Adobe - were now missing/not activated. I use the magazine as a teaching tool, using the production issues it throws up, so I also use the same set of fonts in my teaching from time to time.

I've now spent the best part of my morning waiting for updates to programmes which I never use -  but which are included in the Adobe bundle regardless of whether you actually ask for them or not - and am still sitting staring at my InDesign app, waiting for said fonts to re-activate (which so far has taken about half an hour and is still spinning its wheels). 

While Adobe rake in the monthly subscription cash, we designers who currently really have nowhere else to go in terms of software are left actually unable to work - and paying for the privilege.

WTF???!!!!

This is nothing short of DIGITAL TYRANNY in my view.

Tyranny: a definition: "unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control."

[BobLevine]

If you want help, you can at least tell us what fonts are involved. If you just wanted to rant, I hope you feel better.

[ilex_verticillata]

Is there a place I can turn off this auto-activation of  Adobe Fonts? I just looked in Preferences and I am not seeing a setting for this.

[ilex_verticillata]

NEVER MIND. I found it!

[pault2182399]

Not really Bob as I'm still waiting for the fonts to activate.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com · Accepted solution]

All corporations traded on the stock exchanges are rapacious. Not defending their actions, just noting it.

Fonts are becoming a huge issue, regardless of which brand you have: Adobe Fonts/TypeKit, Linotype/Monotype, Fonts.com...all of them are now  "monetizing" their fonts. That means  they are controlling which fonts are installed on your system, how you use them, and how much money you'll pay to use them in different products  -- embedded into a PDF, sent to a print shop, Embedded into an EPUB, used on a website, used in other digital media.

This forum has countless posts on this subject:

• My fonts disappeared.
• My fonts are there one minute, missing the next.
• I'm spending hours trying to get my fonts to work. Again. And again. All day long.
• My machine slows to a crawl when it tries to synch my fonts.

As a fellow teacher, I ditched Adobe's fonts once they removed them from InDesign several years back (the first CC edition?) and now use open-source fonts exclusively. Royalty-free, we're allowed to download, install, and use them any way we want...just as we have for decades. And they don't go away. Read the fonts' EULA to confirm  your usage rights.

As a designer, we no longer use any proprietary fonts in our materials, both for our work and our clients. I'm sick and tired of the  *&^%$#@!  font issues with these companies.

And turn off TypeKit/Adobe Fonts. Stop synching your fonts with Adobe's servers. Or with Linotype's server. Or any other server owned by anyone else.

An excellent open source font collection is available from https://fonts.google.com/  Download the font files, install on your computer, and voila!

See our recent blog post at https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2019_12-06/font-licenses.shtml

[pault2182399]

Many thanks indeed Bevi - will follow your suggestion I think. 🙂 

[rob day]

I teach design at a university (yes, using Adobe Creative Suite) and I also produce a national magazine.

As others have noted the Type Kit or Adobe Fonts are a relatively new feature that can be easily turned off. I personally think the library is an incredible value for some highend typefaces, so I use the cloud library understanding I may have to troubleshoot occasionally.

The subscription model for either applications or fonts is about protecting intellectual property. So being a university teacher, fonts either by subscription or open source, might be a teaching opportunity. I assume your students are headed for creative careers. Are you expecting them to give up their intellectual property—will they all be working for hire? If they expect all fonts should be open source and cost nothing, will they also be willing to give away their work? Anyone who has ever been involved in original type design knows the huge amount of time it takes to develop a quality typeface. If a font is open source where did it come from? Was it really developed for free, or were the outlines ripped off?

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Rob, I think you're confusing "open source" with the word "Free."

That's not true.

Open source for fonts means that they have a liberal EULA (end user license agreement) where once you download (and maybe pay a fee), you can use them repeatedly in your documents and

files. In this case, "open source" means it has a creative commons, SIL license, or Apache license for usage, regardless of whether the font is a free download or you paid $35 or $350 for it.

The font manufacturers are moving to regulating your use of their fonts and charging additional fees for embedding into PDFs, EPUBs, digital media...for each usage like one PDF of an annual report or edition of a magazine, based on the number of fonts, number of pages in the document, and how the document will be distributed.

Example, one font manufacturer (not Adobe), charged a designer $800 for a basic font family. However, in order to embed the fonts into the PDF for PDF/UA-1 accessibility compliance or to send to the print shop, the charge would have been an additional $10,000 per font weight per year ($40,000 per year). The font company based their embedding licensing fee on who the owner of the content was (a government agency), and how many "eyeballs" they calculated would view the PDF once it was online. In actuality, the document receives fewer than 100 downloads/views per year on the agency's website, but the font manufacturer calculated 1,000,000 download/views. Why 1 million? WTHK. Probably because it's a nice round number.

Google's open source fonts are excellent-to-very good, and have liberal usage licenses. Kerning pairs, hinting, and extended Unicode character sets are all there. Created by leading font designers, not someone working out of their spare bedroom (although with quarantine, even pros are in the spare bedroom right now). Monotype creates many fonts in Google Font's library.

The system is similar to what we have with stock media: there's royalty-free (that you still pay for, but can use without restrictions for most products), and then more regulated images that you pay more money for and are based on usage, editorial, color, cover, etc.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Note that on June 15th, 2020, Adobe ended its licensing of 700 fonts from the Font Bureau and Carter & Cone foundries, and, therefore, these fonts will be removed from your computer and the TypeKit/Adobe Fonts library.

Adobe now mostly resells fonts from other foundaries and no longer creates its own font designs. These companies have every right to change their licensing, pull their fonts from a reseller, or pull them off our computers, too. We only "rent" their software, not own it.

But this creates problems for us designers when we:

• Open older jobs that used these fonts.
• Create logos and other branding, and find the fonts are no longer available.

Read more at:

• https://indesignsecrets.com/more-fonts-are-being-retired-from-creative-cloud.php  and
• https://community.adobe.com/t5/adobe-fonts/foundries-leaving-adobe-fonts/m-p/11110604?page=1#M2137

[rob day]

You do have to consider the risks of the subscription model, but “perpetual” licences have their own set of risks.

With fonts I’m much happier with the subscription model’s EULAs—if I’m passing the job to another InDesign user I don’t have to worry about “lending” them the fonts—I think you would be hard pressed to find a designer who hasn’t occasionally “borrowed” one.

I have a number of utilities with perpetual licences, which no longer work because the developer went out of business and there are no upgrades, and a large library of Type 1 postscript fonts I paid significant money for—it’s just a matter of time before they are dead. When the world is “borrowing” your software and new feature possibilities are limited, the business model is unsustainable. I can lose sleep over Adobe doubling the subscription price, but I don’t think that’s going to happen because the model is more successful if the user base expands.