[Framers] What is going on with Adobe Licensing for FrameMaker?

[Simon BUCH]

Hello,

I sent my question to Adobe Technical Communication <techcomm at adobe.com> 
who were nice enough to respond.
ATC indicated that:
     "if (and when) Adobe stops selling perpetual licenses of TECH COMM 
products like FrameMaker, RoboHelp etc. - we will always take care of 
special cases where customers need to work in an OFFLINE environment and 
need to activate their software over email/telephone (not Internet). 
Adobe customer support team would handle such cases to ensure that the 
customer is not stuck at any point of time."
ATC also indicated that they will review the training for their sales 
teams as the information was inaccurate.

The software activation requirement is actually the current situation 
with the Adobe FrameMaker where software activation *must* be performed 
directly on the internet, or indirectly via request/response codes.

 From reading the available information, the license upgrades for future 
versions of FrameMaker will only be available via:
     Transactional Licensing Program (TLP)
and
     Cumulative Licensing Program (CLP)
... so if you're not on these programmes, getting newer versions of 
Adobe TC products are likely to cost you more.



Many thanks to everyone who responded.

// Simon BUCH -- M-AIS




On 22/10/2019 15:14, Simon BUCH wrote:
> Hello FrameUsers,
>
> My boss just received a telephone call from an Adobe licensing 
> specialist this afternoon indicating that Adobe will be switching OFF 
> perpetual licenses [both for new & renewal] WORLDWIDE for
> * Adobe Technical Communication Suite
> * Adobe FrameMaker
> * Adobe FrameMaker Publishing Server
> * Adobe RoboHelp
> * Adobe RoboHelp Server
>
>
> According to an "Adobe Community" posting by Amitoj SINGH [Product 
> Manager, Adobe Technical Communication Tools]:
>     "Customers will still be able to purchase perpetual licenses of 
> all the above-mentioned products through Channel (Adobe authorized 
> resellers) under Transactional Licensing Program (TLP) and Cumulative 
> Licensing Program (CLP) even after 1 July 2019.
>     Customers who are currently enrolled for Adobe Software Assurance 
> (ASA) or Maintenance and Support (M&S) plans for any of the 
> above-mentioned products will continue to avail of all the benefits 
> for these programs till the expiry date of the current contract."
>
>
> As the call centre licensing specialist gave the impression that the 
> TLP and CLP programmes require the products to have access to Adobe 
> servers.
> This has caused a PANIC in my office as most of my customers are 
> located in a number of different countries, inside tightly controlled 
> corporate and/or military grade networks that have NO access to Adobe 
> online services.
>
> My customers require a stable, reliable publishing environment where 
> workstation configuration is tightly controlled, safely protected from 
> access of update servers.
>
> Does this mean that Adobe is switching to requiring ALL FrameMaker and 
> TCS users to have access to the internet 100% of the time?
> Or was the Adobe licensing specialist inaccurate with the information?
>
> Regards
> // Simon BUCH -- M-AIS
>
>
>