Skip to main content
Harm_Millaard
Harm_Millaard
Inspiring
June 1, 2013
Question

Todd, can you explain, please...

  • June 1, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 20971 views

Todd,

You are on record stating that one of the key benefits of CC is the flexibility it gives Adobe to make updates available.

Can you explain how owning or renting a license makes any difference at all to update policies? To me it looks like a BS argument, but maybe I'm wrong.

I also fail to see the relevancy how point releases for Acrobat, Flash or Dreamweaver need to be aligned with AE or PR. That is exactly what Adobe did in the past, there were 'regular' but infrequent point releases for DW and FL that had no relevancy to AE or PR. How will that change in the future?

What is the difference between CC7 and CC8, a version upgrade, that depends on the rental license model that can not be achieved with a perpetual license?

I think the argument is somewhat akin to owning a house or renting a house. Home improvements on the exteriror are done by the owner. The difference is when these improvements are carried out. If you rent, you have to wait for the owner to decide when he starts, if you are the owner you can decide yourself and have the option to further improve the necessary changes.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    SteveHoeg
    Adobe Employee
    SteveHoeg
    Adobe Employee
    June 1, 2013

    I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, but the idea is subscriptions change how we will be able to do feature bearing updates because of revenue recognition laws. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act prevents new functionality from being added to goods for which the revenues have already been recognized. Because of this we have previously been able to do bug updates with fixes for advertised features, but not add new functionality when we have already recorded the sale. Subscriptions change what may be done in updates because the revenue is recurring in the same time period as the update.

    An excellent question is how have other organizations been able to release features without charging for an update? There are a few ways in which this is possible such as deferring revenue by not recording perpetual sales in the period for which free functional updates are given. When a product makes up a tiny fraction of a company's portfolio this may be feasible, but for Adobe the Creative Suite makes up too significant amount for this to be possible.

    We've been listening to the feedback that has been provided on our announcements and will have news around some issues raised shortly. We are really excited for what the Creative Cloud allow us to do and are fully committed to using it to deliver value that we could not do by spending more effort on isolated application sales. We will now be able to release awesome new Premiere Pro features when they are ready instead of waiting for other applications, and accelerate integration between our offerings. Please keep the feedback coming, we appreciate hearing your concerns.

    --Steve Hoeg, Engineering Manager, Adobe Premiere Pro

    jasonvp
    jasonvp
    Inspiring
    June 1, 2013

    SteveHoeg wrote:

    The Sarbanes-Oxley Act prevents new functionality from being added to goods for which the revenues have already been recognized.

    I've seen people claim this since SOX was put into place quite a few years ago, but when I've asked for the specifics in the law, no one seems to be able to produce.  FWIW, I'm not calling you out on that, Steve.  Adobe isn't the first company to have done something like this because of supposed SOX compliance.

    Harm, et al ... if this is actually the case, then the rest of the world is basically being punished because of what some morons at Enron did here in the states many years ago.  SOX was (and is?) a knee-jerk reaction to that by law makers here, and it's likely they WAY overstepped their bounds. :-(

    able123
    able123
    Inspiring
    June 1, 2013

    [ message removed by forum host  - personal insults to any forum member, whatever their status, are not tolerated ]

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices