Yeah, disturbing. If it continues, more and more programs will have cloud only subscriptions that completely control your access and credit card.
 
Like Dub said, try Libre Office. 5 years ago, Libre and the sister Open Office project were a good intended attempt to give a free, open source alternative to MS Office. Was a joke then, but not now. Still has the quirks being worked out, but up and running on my rigs and getting closer to slaying the giant. My old copy of MS Office was cut throated by MS themselves when win 7 was not backwards compatible with their own word processor. The bastards had notifications that they were weeping with compassion with us in every step of the ordeal. Be of great joy however because they fixed the incompatibility problem. Just bring out the credit card and for the right price, all would be bliss.
 
F*** them. Installed Libre Office and missing nothing, although just a lay user. There is the lack of a replacement for MS Outlook. Seems the most popular replacement for Outlook is Mozilla Thunderbird and installing their calendar ap when using Libre or Open Office.
 
http://www.libreoffice.org/
 
Parallel situation with graphics. Adobe Photoshop is about king of the realm. Open source and free competitor is Gimp, likewise a substandard program 5 years ago but not now. Most of what you could do in Photoshop can be done in Gimp. Excellent program that anyone dealing with graphics should be aware of.
 
http://www.gimp.org/
 
Now, if someone can come up with an open source Adobe Audition.
 
John
 

An FYI on thunderbird. Mozilla has stopped development on it which makes me hesitant to use. Email programs are often targets for malware and exploits. I would be concerned that a program is abandoned in a world where malware is constantly evolving

John..I think Audition may be the easiest one on the list to replace. I have had many jobs where Photoshop was mandatory but have never had a job where Audition was a must. In fact, I only use audition when I am doing small projects mixed in my video editor and have a small change that can be handled by the "edit in audition" feature.

dubdisciple
In theory a complete boycott would work but that is not what I addressed. I addressed the assumption that those of us using it do so becaus we have to have the latest version. This is simply not true. As for a boycott, I'm not personally in position to pass up money in the hope that everybody joins me. I have had at least 5 assignments for companies this year that required current version of software. I would love to meet the person charismatic enough to get an entire industry to boycott their bread and butter.

That is the entire problem. There are always those that will cave in for whatever reason (I used the latest versions junkies purely as one example) because they fail to realise who really has the power and suppliers are only too aware of that. I can see why people don't make the stand, it's fear of being the one who gets left behind / misses out in some way. I just wish that for once they would as it would open up a whole new dynamic in the world of supply/demand. Given the power of the www to spread a message quicky, it should be easier than ever.

Paulo..I'm still hoping someone will offer an alternative. Monopolies tend to have an advantage in these situations. I recall taking part in a straw poll at convention of various visual media professionals. This included animators, 3d artists, graphic design specialists in film and print, web designers, etc and although we all had different preferences for various software for different tasks like editing and compositing, 100% in attendance used Photoshop.

Didn't know Thunderbird stopped development, only that with win 8, I can't reconfigure it to not take emails off the server as you can on win 7 and earlier. This a common complaint.
 
Have a hard time giving up Audition 1.5, only decent release before Adobe took Syntrillium's Cool Edit Pro and created a bugged, bloated disaster with ver 2 and onward. The version currently in the suite is reported to be a cut down program regressing to SoundBooth level since the thrust of the suite is for graphics, not audio.
 
Interested to what people are using as a replacement, or not a replacement with the power of earlier Audition releases. I cut my teeth on Cool Edit Pro as my main DAW, so maybe defectively look at Audition 1.5 as the ultimate wav editor.
 
John
 
Paulo is right. If the collective could get unified and vote with their wallets, the cloud subscription model would be a forced death, like we have seen in a lesser way by some software companies abandoning Ilock in the face of sanctions.

John..another FYI on audition. Most of the upgrades since 1.5 were bloat and arguably some are now but partn of the big chanhe was to maken it Mac compatible too.Tons of things had to be stripped away so they released a very soundbooth like version in CS6. The CC versions are much better but admittedly will not do much more for you in the audio realm. The noise reduction and timestretching features were improved, most improvements are geared towards people using audio for video applications

paulo



That is the entire problem. There are always those that will cave in for whatever reason (I used the latest versions junkies purely as one example) because they fail to realise who really has the power and suppliers are only too aware of that. I can see why people don't make the stand, it's fear of being the one who gets left behind / misses out in some way. 

Those people account for a fraction of the user base. I'm sure there are plenty of commercial facilities who will gladly opt for the subscription model, cloud storage, the advantages of networking possibilities, pay an extra for training and support and a 24h hotline.
 
We can't expect the big fish to adhere to the smaller fish ethics - their needs and financial means are on a totally different scale. 
 
Whether the software companies can survive w/o taking into account the smaller fish is a different question, though. But my guess is that they'll always manage to reel a bunch of them in, if only for the reasons you mention.
 

paulo
That is the entire problem. There are always those that will cave in for whatever reason (I used the latest versions junkies purely as one example) because they fail to realise who really has the power and suppliers are only too aware of that. I can see why people don't make the stand, it's fear of being the one who gets left behind / misses out in some way. I just wish that for once they would as it would open up a whole new dynamic in the world of supply/demand. Given the power of the www to spread a message quicky, it should be easier than ever.

I've said that exact same thing...and  Yep...I make a stand for the "little guy"
and am told directly to "shut up"...even though the stand I was making didn't really affect me..

People don't care...they want what they want...and it doesn't matter about anything OR anyone else.
As long as they GET WHAT THEY WANT...it's all good.

To quote the inimitable Eric Cartman "Screw you guys...I'm goin' home" is their attitude. 

Larry, I have made an effort to just let you rant without responding but are you seriously going to pop into every thread to give the same rant and then announce you are going to be quiet?