Rant Adobe

pmanton

pmanton

Final Approach
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I purchased Acrobat-7 some years ago and found it fit my needs nicely. Recently I had a crash and needed to re-install it. After re-installation I find that it cannot be activated and Adobe expects me to purchase a new version. When I purchased it there was no expiration date on the DVD. Damn Adobe all to hell. Ransom ware-----Pay me or you can't access your 337s.

Bah Humbug
 
I rely heavily on Adobe software, and I'm starting to hate them almost as much as I hate Google. I 'm becoming more and more convinced with every update that the newest releases of their software are designed by people who never actually used it.

I recently had to uninstall several new versions of their software and reinstall old versions because the new revisions were so buggy as to be unusable. But they still bill me every month for the subscription, of of the benefits of which is supposed to be that I always have access to the new versions. The problem is that the new versions are ****, and they don't allow most of the software to be purchased outright anymore. You're stuck with the subscription -- forever.

I was raised in Brooklyn back in the days when the Mafia had their hands into everything. But I've never met a worse bunch of racketeers than Adobe. One of my goals for this year is to find replacements for every Adobe product I use.

Rich
 
Every version of Acrobat after 9 has been a disaster.

I'm swearing less at the current DC version than I used to, but I think it is mostly out of a Stockholm-syndrome like reaction.

I agree, the designers never tried to use it.
 
pmanton said:
I purchased Acrobat-7 some years ago and found it fit my needs nicely. Recently I had a crash and needed to re-install it. After re-installation I find that it cannot be activated and Adobe expects me to purchase a new version. When I purchased it there was no expiration date on the DVD. Damn Adobe all to hell. Ransom ware-----Pay me or you can't access your 337s.

Bah Humbug
Click to expand...
Class action suit?

Small claims court?
 
172andyou said:
Small claims court to sue Adobe for not continuing to support seven year old software. Good luck...
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No, that's what the class action would be for. I wouldn't expect a small claims court to do anything more than award him a refund of the money they charged him for the new version of software, for breach of contract.
 
Adobe is forcing everyone to the cloud, which then forces me to pinhole my proxy server. Grrrrr. Just today we finished up remediating all the old versions of adobe that was on PCs causing Nessus hits in the hundreds. Agreed that DC seems to get us mostly where we need to be for now but we had to add some open source PDF stuff for a few of the one off users. Their grab for market share is understandable - if they can lock you into their product, why wouldn't they? But it's still antithetical to what I'm trying to do to secure my borders.
 
Palmpilot said:
No, that's what the class action would be for. I wouldn't expect a small claims court to do anything more than award him a refund of the money they charged him for the new version of software, for breach of contract.
Click to expand...

Class action suit against Adobe for not continuing to support seven year old software. Good luck...
 
172andyou said:
Class action suit against Adobe for not continuing to support seven year old software. Good luck...
Click to expand...
No, class action for breach of contract. As he said, the product had no life limit specified when he bought it, so there was no warning that they would unilaterally disable the ability to reinstall it. I agree that they're not required to continue to provide support in the sense of continuing to provide updates, but they should have at least upheld their promise to provide activation service, or else provide a one-time update to remove the activation requirement from the software.

I suspect that the main problem with the idea would be finding enough similarly-situated customers to make it worthwhile for an attorney to pursue it.
 
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Palmpilot said:
I suspect that the main problem with the idea would be finding enough similarly-situated customers to make it worthwhile for an attorney to pursue it.
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No, the main problem is that the case doesn't have a leg to stand on. You want software to be something that it isn't.

Have him post the EULA. Betcha a tank of avgas that it specifies a support period. Probably two years. Two is less than seven. Some EULAs specify much shorter periods, perhaps 90 days. 90 days is also less than seven years. If he wanted software that would be supported forever then he should have declined the EULA and returned the software seven years ago. He didn't.

This case would get laughed out of court.
 
172andyou said:
No, the main problem is that the case doesn't have a leg to stand on. You want software to be something that it isn't.

Have him post the EULA. Betcha a tank of avgas that it specifies a support period. Probably two years. Two is less than seven. Some EULAs specify much shorter periods, perhaps 90 days. 90 days is also less than seven years. If he wanted software that would be supported forever then he should have declined the EULA and returned the software seven years ago. He didn't.

This case would get laughed out of court.
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I agree that reading the EULA would be necessary.
 
And a pretty good chance that it requires mandatory arbitration, not court action....

I avoid Adobe. Even photo and video stuff I've moved to open source.
 
wsuffa said:
And a pretty good chance that it requires mandatory arbitration, not court action....

I avoid Adobe. Even photo and video stuff I've moved to open source.
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I'm in the process of doing the same. What do you like? My needs are relatively simple and everything I work on eventually winds up on the Web. I use mainly Fireworks and Premiere Pro now. I use maybe one percent (if that much) of the latter's capabilities.

The only task for which I can't find any replacement at all is working with legacy Fireworks PNG files. Once Fireworks ****s the bed and stops working altogether on new Windows releases, I will cancel my Adobe subscription altogether and get a waiver on the early cancellation fee. If Adobe won't do it, AmEx will; and if AmEx won't, then I'll take Adobe to court. Fireworks is still part of the package. When it ceases to work, then the value of the package will have been substantially dimished from what I agreed to.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
I'm in the process of doing the same. What do you like? My needs are relatively simple and everything I work on eventually winds up on the Web. I use mainly Fireworks and Premiere Pro now. I use maybe one percent (if that much) of the latter's capabilities.

The only task for which I can't find any replacement at all is working with legacy Fireworks PNG files. Once Fireworks ****s the bed and stops working altogether on new Windows releases, I will cancel my Adobe subscription altogether and get a waiver on the early cancellation fee. If Adobe won't do it, AmEx will; and if AmEx won't, then I'll take Adobe to court. Fireworks is still part of the package. When it ceases to work, then the value of the package will have been substantially dimished from what I agreed to.

Rich
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I use GIMP and Shotcut. There are other alternatives to Shotcut that folks like, but Gimp is pretty well known as a photoshop alternative.
 
Acrobat 7 released in 2005. Dollars to doughnuts there was not a EULA in the current sense because software developers hadn't started their ******** subscription model business yet
 
wsuffa said:
I use GIMP and Shotcut. There are other alternatives to Shotcut that folks like, but Gimp is pretty well known as a photoshop alternative.
Click to expand...

I've been using GIMP for years, but it won't open the layers in Adobe's proprietary Fireworks PNG format. Shotcut I have installed and have used a bit. Thanks.

Rich
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
apparently LibreOffice has some pdf creation capability
https://opensource.com/alternatives/adobe-acrobat
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Yeah, I think that may actually go way back to the later editions of StarOffice. I know that it's been part of OpenOffice for years. It's limited, but if all you have to do is export a document created in any of the supported formats into PDF format without any of Acrobat's more advanced capabilities, it works very well.

Microsoft also has a PDF printer. So do the full versions of the software drivers for many physical printers and scanners. Usually the PDF printers are accessible to all programs, not just the ones that installed them.

Long story short, if all one needs to do is export documents into PDF, there are many ways to do it besides Acrobat.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Yeah, I think that may actually go way back to the later editions of StarOffice. I know that it's been part of OpenOffice for years. It's limited, but if all you have to do is export a document created in any of the supported formats into PDF format without any of Acrobat's more advanced capabilities, it works very well.

Microsoft also has a PDF printer. So do the full versions of the software drivers for many physical printers and scanners. Usually the PDF printers are accessible to all programs, not just the ones that installed them.

Long story short, if all one needs to do is export documents into PDF, there are many ways to do it besides Acrobat.

Rich
Click to expand...
Yes, and there are a few stand-alones like CutePDF that work well.
 
172andyou said:
Part of support is the system for validating license keys, which apparently doesn't exist anymore.
Click to expand...

There's a difference between not actively supporting software that was purchased outright with a permanent license, and intentionally and deliberately disabling the activation system needed to allow people to use that purchased and permanently licensed software. The former would be analogous to a car maker telling you that you're on your own once the warranty expires, but the latter to that car maker sending out a signal that fries the PCM so the car can't be started anymore.

Personally, I think Adobe needs to be slammed with a massive class-action suit seeking either reactivation of previously-purchased software, or a lifetime free license to the CC versions.

Adobe currently ranks right up there with Google and Facebook on my **** list. On the positive side, I've been looking at some FOSS replacements, and there's some pretty decent stuff out there (especially on the Linux side).

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
There's a difference between not actively supporting software that was purchased outright with a permanent license
Click to expand...

SkyHog said:
Acrobat 7 released in 2005. Dollars to doughnuts there was not a EULA in the current sense because software developers hadn't started their ******** subscription model business yet
Click to expand...

RJM62 said:
Personally, I think Adobe needs to be slammed with a massive class-action suit seeking either reactivation of previously-purchased software, or a lifetime free license to the CC versions.
Click to expand...

There is a 0% chance that their EULA in 2005 didn't cover this scenario. And, no, EULA's are not new. They aren't new to subscriptions, they weren't new to PCs. I can tell you first hand that they have been around since the 80's. And, no, he didn't purchase the software outright. It isn't a car and trying to make it into one will lead you to file a court case that will be laughed out of court.

I don't have the Acrobat one, but the Photoshop-7 one from 2004 says the following: "Except as may be otherwise provided in Section 14, Adobe warrants to the person or entity that first purchases a license for the Software for use pursuant to the terms of this license, that the Software will perform substantially in accordance with the Documentation for the ninety (90) day period following receipt of the Software when used on the recommended operating system and hardware configuration"

12 years is 4,380 days. Case closed.

Expect your class action lawyer to expect payment in advance instead of a percentage of the award, she'll have read the EULA.
 
In some states that limitation may not apply.

That said I agree with both of you.... It is a pretty long time and the manufacturer won't want to do it (to push folks into a more current/expensive solution), but it's also easy enough to maintain an activation server or disable the protection.

With the current national political environment, the little guy is unlikely to get much sympathy. That's balanced against the possibility of a worthless settlement to make it go away. You might get a 20% discount on the first year of a current subscription.
 
172andyou said:
There is a 0% chance that their EULA in 2005 didn't cover this scenario. And, no, EULA's are not new. They aren't new to subscriptions, they weren't new to PCs. I can tell you first hand that they have been around since the 80's. And, no, he didn't purchase the software outright. It isn't a car and trying to make it into one will lead you to file a court case that will be laughed out of court.

I don't have the Acrobat one, but the Photoshop-7 one from 2004 says the following: "Except as may be otherwise provided in Section 14, Adobe warrants to the person or entity that first purchases a license for the Software for use pursuant to the terms of this license, that the Software will perform substantially in accordance with the Documentation for the ninety (90) day period following receipt of the Software when used on the recommended operating system and hardware configuration"

12 years is 4,380 days. Case closed.

Expect your class action lawyer to expect payment in advance instead of a percentage of the award, she'll have read the EULA.
Click to expand...
There's a difference between saying that a warranty is not valid past its expiration date, and deliberately disabling it when the warranty expires. Under your interpretation, the publisher would have been with their rights to deliberately disable Photoshop-7 91 days after the software was received. Do you really think a judge or jury would go along with that?
 
Palmpilot said:
There's a difference between saying that a warranty is not valid past its expiration date, and deliberately disabling it when the warranty expires. Under your interpretation, the publisher would have been with their rights to deliberately disable Photoshop-7 91 days after the software was received. Do you really think a judge or jury would go along with that?
Click to expand...

1) Yes, the judge would say "you agreed to 90 days", sucks to be you. (Of course, he would say this more politely and, in real life, no software vendor would ever do that)

2) We aren't talking about 91 days. We are talking about 4,380. Try explaining that one to a judge.
 
172andyou said:
There is a 0% chance that their EULA in 2005 didn't cover this scenario. And, no, EULA's are not new. They aren't new to subscriptions, they weren't new to PCs. I can tell you first hand that they have been around since the 80's. And, no, he didn't purchase the software outright. It isn't a car and trying to make it into one will lead you to file a court case that will be laughed out of court.

I don't have the Acrobat one, but the Photoshop-7 one from 2004 says the following: "Except as may be otherwise provided in Section 14, Adobe warrants to the person or entity that first purchases a license for the Software for use pursuant to the terms of this license, that the Software will perform substantially in accordance with the Documentation for the ninety (90) day period following receipt of the Software when used on the recommended operating system and hardware configuration"

12 years is 4,380 days. Case closed.

Expect your class action lawyer to expect payment in advance instead of a percentage of the award, she'll have read the EULA.
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter if the warranty is 16 minutes. That's not the same as intentionally disabling the software. The 90-day period would likely be tossed anyway on the bases of it it being unconscionable in light of the software's cost, and EULAs as a group meeting all the requirements of contracts of adhesion, which courts tend to view with vigorously-raised eyebrows.

This whole subscription model is going to bite Adobe in the ass. One of the most common themes on their own community forums is replacements for their products. I've found perfectly usable replacements for every Adobe product I use except Fireworks, and most of them I learned about on Adobe's forums. Users are not happy.

Even in the case of Fireworks, the only functionality I haven't been able to find is the ability to edit legacy Fireworks PNG documents using the data that Macromedia added to the APNG format. Eventually I believe that either someone will reverse-engineer that, or a court in some civilized place like the EU will require Adobe to release it. They're not supporting the software anymore, anyway; but they also know that because they still make it available to CC subscribers, withdrawing it would substantially change the subscription enough to give users a justification for canceling their subscriptions without penalty.

Rich
 
172andyou said:
There is a 0% chance that their EULA in 2005 didn't cover this scenario. And, no, EULA's are not new. They aren't new to subscriptions, they weren't new to PCs. I can tell you first hand that they have been around since the 80's. And, no, he didn't purchase the software outright. It isn't a car and trying to make it into one will lead you to file a court case that will be laughed out of court.

I don't have the Acrobat one, but the Photoshop-7 one from 2004 says the following: "Except as may be otherwise provided in Section 14, Adobe warrants to the person or entity that first purchases a license for the Software for use pursuant to the terms of this license, that the Software will perform substantially in accordance with the Documentation for the ninety (90) day period following receipt of the Software when used on the recommended operating system and hardware configuration"

12 years is 4,380 days. Case closed.

Expect your class action lawyer to expect payment in advance instead of a percentage of the award, she'll have read the EULA.
Click to expand...

In all fairness, I did not say EULAs did not exist, I said they weren't the same as they are today. They've been around forever,but they haven't always been so one-sided
 
SkyHog said:
In all fairness, I did not say EULAs did not exist, I said they weren't the same as they are today. They've been around forever,but they haven't always been so one-sided
Click to expand...

The one-sided aspect is one of the reasons why EULAs and TOSs are often tossed by courts. Most of them could have been written by the Mafia.

In my experience, using the phrases "not fit for purpose," "unconscionable," and "contract by adhesion" when a vendor uses a EULA or TOS to protest a disputed charge for some software or service that didn't work as promised almost always results in a speedy refund. I recently got a full refund from DirecTV for their ****ty DirecTV NOW service (which never once worked properly, by the way) despite numerous references on their site and in the EULA to it being non-refundable.

Rich
 
172andyou said:
1) Yes, the judge would say "you agreed to 90 days", sucks to be you. (Of course, he would say this more politely and, in real life, no software vendor would ever do that)

2) We aren't talking about 91 days. We are talking about 4,380. Try explaining that one to a judge.
Click to expand...

I think that the judge would say that the customer didn't only buy a warranty, he also bought a license to use the product. I think he or she would read whatever documentation existed, and find that no expiration date was specified on that license, and that there was therefore no agreement that the product could be intentionally disabled after the warranty expired, regardless of how much time had passed.
 
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I found the following interesting, in light of the problem discussed in this thread:

Following a social media firestorm regarding customer relations, HRD Software co-founder Rick Ruhl, W4PC, has left the company and the ham radio industry. In a January open letter to customers, co-owner Michael Carper wrote that he and fellow co-founder Randy Gawtry would be assuming day-to-day management of the company.

The story goes back to last September, when a Ham Radio Deluxe customer posted a negative review of the product on a ham radio website. HRD management became aware of the review and added the customer's callsign to an internal "problem customer" list that blocked him from running future versions of the software. In December, the customer encountered some problems and created a "trouble ticket," according to Carper. A technician suggested that he install the latest version of the software, not knowing that it would not run under the customer's call. Apparently, the customer then had trouble re-installing the previous version and took his beef to social media, complaining (inaccurately, according to Carper) that HRD had hacked his computer. The post went viral and was reposted on a variety of blogs.

In addition to Ruhl's departure, Carper said the capability to disable the program based on a customer's callsign has been removed from the software and the license agreement has been modified to clarify that a customer has a perpetual license to use the version of the software that he/she has purchased.
​
http://cqnewsroom.blogspot.com/2017/02/shakeup-at-ham-radio-deluxe.html
 
You negate the nuisance factor when discussing the use of litigation. Suppose, just suppose that you could find a thousand users in as many distinct counties as you could find all over the country. Each one files a small claims action and those can NOT be defended by remote control. Adobe has two choices, hire an attorney in EACH one of those counties to defend the action or allow the judgment by default to the user. In the former, they have spent something on the order of a million $$ in attorneys fees and in the latter each user has a judgment that can be perfected by application to the county in which Adobe resides. In either case the nuisance factor MAY get Adobe's attention. If not, you keep going until it DOES get their attention.

Just a thought, mindya. I'm not an attorney but I've read a lot of Perry Mason novels.

Jim
 
weirdjim said:
You negate the nuisance factor when discussing the use of litigation. Suppose, just suppose that you could find a thousand users in as many distinct counties as you could find all over the country. Each one files a small claims action and those can NOT be defended by remote control. Adobe has two choices, hire an attorney in EACH one of those counties to defend the action or allow the judgment by default to the user. In the former, they have spent something on the order of a million $$ in attorneys fees and in the latter each user has a judgment that can be perfected by application to the county in which Adobe resides. In either case the nuisance factor MAY get Adobe's attention. If not, you keep going until it DOES get their attention.

Just a thought, mindya. I'm not an attorney but I've read a lot of Perry Mason novels.

Jim
Click to expand...
Which is why most all companies contracts now have binding arbitration as the sole recourse. Even Microsoft. Forces you to spend money, too, and forces the contingency attorneys out of the picture.
 
Adobe has been a disaster for years. Their answer for why files don't save on network drives properly is "because that's unsupported".

They were also the WORST company I've ever dealt with as a vendor, and had the biggest raging *******s in charge I've ever seen. That's not an understatement.

My typical answer when a Marketing person comes to my desk and says they're having trouble with something made by Adobe is a smile and an, "Of course you are."

They are an unacceptable product and an unacceptable company to deal with. Those of us who know this, simply put up with the world's addiction to them and their overpriced proprietary garbage.

We refuse to officially support their crap in our environment. We've made it clear that they're at best, a difficult vendor and at worst, actively ignorant of how to do customer support on their products, and all support is done on an "best effort" basis.

Marketing still loves the crap. They live in constant fear of it breaking and us saying, "Enjoy keeping both pieces when it does." And yet make no effort to learn or use anything else.

It'll be their deadline that an update of the "subscription model" software they've chosen to use, keeps them from meeting, someday. We've washed our hands of it. There's not enough time left on the planet with me breathing, to deal with Adobe and their crap. I can offer you an 800 number if you'd like to see what they'll do for you in person, and see why we do not support their products anymore. Enjoy.
 
denverpilot said:
Adobe has been a disaster for years. Their answer for why files don't save on network drives properly is "because that's unsupported".
Click to expand...

"What, you don't want to use Adobe Cloud? That'll solve the problem." ("p.s. our EULA lets us mine your data and market to you").

I avoid Adobe every way possible. It's just too bad that their products have become a monopo... er, standard for graphics and photo folks to use.
 
denverpilot said:
Adobe has been a disaster for years. Their answer for why files don't save on network drives properly is "because that's unsupported".

They were also the WORST company I've ever dealt with as a vendor, and had the biggest raging *******s in charge I've ever seen. That's not an understatement.

My typical answer when a Marketing person comes to my desk and says they're having trouble with something made by Adobe is a smile and an, "Of course you are."

They are an unacceptable product and an unacceptable company to deal with. Those of us who know this, simply put up with the world's addiction to them and their overpriced proprietary garbage.

We refuse to officially support their crap in our environment. We've made it clear that they're at best, a difficult vendor and at worst, actively ignorant of how to do customer support on their products, and all support is done on an "best effort" basis.

Marketing still loves the crap. They live in constant fear of it breaking and us saying, "Enjoy keeping both pieces when it does." And yet make no effort to learn or use anything else.

It'll be their deadline that an update of the "subscription model" software they've chosen to use, keeps them from meeting, someday. We've washed our hands of it. There's not enough time left on the planet with me breathing, to deal with Adobe and their crap. I can offer you an 800 number if you'd like to see what they'll do for you in person, and see why we do not support their products anymore. Enjoy.
Click to expand...

I also suspect that most of their developers have never actually used the products they build in anything even vaguely resembling a production environment.

Rich
 
I switched our company over to using Foxit. Other than having slow download times it's been rock solid.
 
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