[Leica] Re: Photoshop educational discount (was B/W digital printing options)

[Allan Wafkowski <allan@sohogurus.net>]

Do you remember the time before Apple came out with True Type fonts? Do 
you remember what Adobe charged for their fonts? Obscene. There has 
never been a time when Adobe has not attempted to rip the entrails out 
of its customer base. Their business model seems to be that of hyenas 
after dark.

Allan


Brian Reid wrote:
>> Corporate greed has no moral component to it? Maybe in Switzerland.
>
> The founders of Adobe are dear friends of mine. One of them is the 
> godfather of my children. One of the founders (Warnock) is retired; the 
> other (Geschke) is still onboard as CEO. I know them well, I know their 
> company well, I know the people well. A few months ago the CEO had a 
> party at his house to celebrate the contributions of the 20 earliest 
> people at Adobe. I was invited to it.
>
> Adobe does not make "obscene" profits on Photoshop. They make solid 
> profits, but nothing out of the ordinary. They have a very good 
> product, and they price it so that they can afford to keep improving 
> it. One of the reasons why they are still in business 20 years after 
> they were founded is that they have managed to price their products 
> properly. They make enough profit that they don't need to be bought out 
> to stay alive. They use that profit to treat their employees well and 
> to make a very high quality product. There are nearly 100 people 
> involved in engineering and documenting Photoshop. Here in California, 
> people of that caliber need to be paid well; I suspect that the 
> salary/benefits budget for Photoshop development is around US$20 
> million per year. They have to sell 50,000 to 70,000 copies of 
> Photoshop just to pay the salaries of its creators. These creators are 
> not greedy corporate slime, they are my neighbors.
>
> Photoshop is an astonishingly reliable program. It pretty much stands 
> alone among computer programs that I have used in the last decade, as 
> totally bug-free. Every release of Photoshop for every platform has 
> been solid, reliable, compatible, documented, supported, etc. I think 
> there were a couple of small problems in 4.0 for Windows; nothing 
> important, but they were fixed quickly and free. People don't buy the 
> next release of Photoshop to get around all of the bugs in the previous 
> release. They buy the next release of Photoshop because it does things 
> that they really want.
>
> Both Warnock and Geschke are the most moral and honorable people you 
> will ever meet. I have nothing negative to say about either of them, 
> except perhaps that Geschke smokes cheap cigars. Warnock has used the 
> money he made from Adobe to found Octavo, which is devoted to 
> preserving rare books and making them available (in digital form) to 
> the public. Octavo could never have been started with venture capital; 
> it is a labor of love and not of profit. Geschke has generously 
> supported various local charities, historical societies, museums, 
> universities, and so on. He is one of the very few computer-industry 
> executives to donate money without holding a press conference to brag 
> about it or demanding that his name be put on buildings.
>
>
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