Now OT, I suppose. RE: Adobe pricing policies (was: FrameMaker 12 released)

[Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain@aeris.net)]

Rick Quatro said:
> Excellent point by Syed. Another point that is easy to miss in this discussion: If all of Adobe's products had the level of quality control that FrameMaker has (long-standing and new bugs, outdated and incomplete documentation, etc.), Adobe certainly wouldn't be as successful as it is.

Indeed, yes! It is the small users loyal to FrameMaker, despite of the above, who have stayed with the product for a long time. Larger corporations will make decisions to switch tools if they encounter issues or cost concerns - even if their employees may say or want otherwise.

> In my opinion, FrameMaker's upgrade pricing is way too high

Yes!

> especially for those who got stuck with FrameMaker 9. Adobe should be especially generous with previous version users to keep them in the fold. 

I suspect that this generosity is unlikely - this is probably one of the groups of people that Adobe wants to move over to the subscription model, by forcing them to either spend $999 for an "upgrade" or make them think that the annual contract with monthly payments is a better deal. 

> Also, at $400, I doubt if FrameMaker XML Author is going to be able to compete with other XML editors out there. The idea is fantastic, but the cost needs to be around $100-150 a seat.

Yes. There are already lower-cost (many free too) XML editor products that work very well. Although some are expensive too ... like Oxygen at $423 a seat.

> No disrespect intended for Max or Kapil, just the way I see it.

Agreed! I hope I have been clear about that too ... if not, thanks for emphasizing it. :) I fault the Adobe pricing policy folks for the stupidities over the past few years ... of $399 upgrades - some of which should have been treated as bug fix releases, IMHO. 

Z

Maxwell Hoffman said:
> For another viewpoint, Adobe was just named in the top 100 companies 
> to work for by Fortune. Our 2013 revenues considerably exceeded 
> projections. So "somebody" out there is happy with Adobe.  ;-)

Perhaps. :) But, at what cost?

The unhappy ones are probably the small users - like myself - who helped FrameMaker become what it is and Adobe *clearly* does not care about us anymore. That is unlike the founders of Frame Technology who I met many years ago ... and the founders of Adobe too, I would hope!

Financial success by large companies is not the only measure of success that matters. It is why in my 35+ years of work, I have chosen to do many small startups and try to only work for small companies. My current startup (I was one of the founders) now has 80 employees and I bet that, *collectively*, we are a happier bunch of people than all the folks at Adobe. But we will
*never* make those top lists due to our tiny size! :)

FWIW, the largest company I ever worked for was Analog Devices (helped their small 60 person semiconductor division grow large ... my first job out of college). Even there, supporting small customers was a matter of pride for us - an *individual* could buy a single part from them directly when I worked there.

Z