Single user license for Adobe Font Folio Open Type Ed?
D...@adobeforums.com
Seems absurd to require one person with one PC to buy 10 licenses if they only need one.
Dominic...@adobeforums.com
They don't. They copyright the font program and the digital outlines, which certainly weren't around in Galileo's time. In the case of new typefaces (ie, those that are not just straight copies of historical fonts), they also take out a design patent on the design of the letters, which is entirely fair.
As for price, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. It's not a case of forcing people to buy a minimum 10 licences; it's a case of charging $5000 for over 2200 fonts (ie, just over $2.25 a font) and and giving you 10 licences into the bargain.
Does not seem ethical to me, actually it sounds like taking something that never was yours in the first place, calling it your own, and then selling it.
That's ridiculous. The software didn't exist neither did the digitisations. Even where a font is an exact copy of a historical font, someone had to do all the work of digitsing it and creating the full character set. Why should you not have to pay for their work or not pay a fair price ($2.25)? Plus, Adobe sells many smaller collections.
That would be just as bad as if I stole Adobe license keys for Photoshop, and sold them on ebay for fifty bucks.
No, it isn't. That would be pure theft. You would have added nothing to the programs, but that is not the case with these fonts.
I'd like to see which Italian families granted copyrights to Adobe Corp to fonts that their GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG grandparents created.
First off, many countries don't allow fonts to be copyrighted. Even if they do, there's usually a time limit on the life of the copyright (in many cases, 50 years after the author's death), so there's no question of rights being required. In any case, they didn't create digital fonts. (Or do you have evidence that they were using computers in Italy hundreds of years ago?)
Lan...@adobeforums.com
I wanted to respond to this post earlier this morning, but I didn't have enough time, and there was so very much to set straight.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Lance
D...@adobeforums.com
Sure I do Dominic Hurley. Galalieo himself used the OSX operating system on his Mac when he created the original sketches for the first helicopter. In fact he used Illustrator 7 to do the designs. I’ll post the proof on my web site and when I’m finished I’ll add the URL here so you can check it out, since you asked me for proof which leads me to believe that you could accept the idea of PC's in existence in 16th and 17th century Italy. I have a tintype of Galelieo at his PC around her somewhere hmm...
D...@adobeforums.com
No I think Adobe is looking at it the wrong way and that corporate believes people don’t know when they are getting stung by software pricing. If you were to add up the total price of each individual font, assuming an average price of 25 bucks per font set which is about what the average price is for an individual Adobe font set if purchased separately, that comes out to FIFTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. And instead they are selling the complete set for less than one tenth the price? AND throwing in ten licenses to boot? That dilutes the price of each individual font set to TWENTY FIVE CENTS INSTEAD OF 25 DOLLARS which means that Adobe is overcharging by ONE HUNDRED TIMES THE (SUPPOSED) ACTUAL WORTH of the fonts, when the ten additional licenses are factored into the formula. Do the math and prove it to yourself.
The only thing that your assertion proves, is that by Adobe Corp. selling the fonts at $2.25 per font and selling them for Five thousand dollars instead of Fifty Five thousand dollars (what they are supposedly worth) AND giving out ten licenses in the deal, is how grossly inflated the price for the Adobe Font Folio is.
Even if you forget the ten free licenses, and even if Adobe sold the set for 5 grand for one pc, the fonts would STILL be overpriced by ten times their actual worth. If Adobe actually did only give out one license for the five grand, I MIGHT believe that they are really worth 55 grand, however it would still at that inflated price be to high to swallow that belief. The only thing I can surmise, is that by giving out nine free licenses, that someone on the Adobe Board of Directors, whoever is in charge of making up these absurd prices which they apparently pull out of the sky, feels guilty about inflating the price ten times, so they figure hey lets throw in ten free licenses to make up for it. The only problem with that scenario is that now the price is inflated by ONE HUNDRED TIMES instead of TEN TIMES so it just makes the decision makers at Adobe look dumb and demonstrates that someone was either not thinking very clearly when they determined this price point, or that they believe consumers are too stupid to realize that they have been duped.
Another point. I purchased the full retail commercial version of Adobe Capture 3.0 a few years ago for 700 bucks. And a few months later, Adobe slashes price on Capture by 300 dollars, with the stroke of a pen.
If Adobe can slash price that much on a product you know they are grossly overcharging for some software packages – not all but some. I felt quite ripped off to pay about 700 bucks for software and now people can get it for almost half the price I paid. That's just plain greed and nothing else. Greed.
There is no value added to ANY product when prices are inflated ONE HUNDRED times their actual worth. I think Enron comes to mind and this is an excellent example of corporate irresphonsibility when it comes to multi billion dollar software firms overcharging by one hundred times the actual worth of their products. IMHO.
D...@adobeforums.com
And I love adobe products. I absolutely love them and use them all the time and buy them. And I am sad to see a company whose products I love so much harm their credibility by inflating their prices by 100 times for this particular product. I’m sure this thread will be deleted soon by some Adobe corporate big Whig but before it gets deleted, I sure hope some pricing decision maker at Adobe reads this post and realizes how dumb it is to inflate their prices by one hundred times, for Font Folio, and completely re do the price structuring for this product, so that an average guy like me can afford to purchase one license, at a fair, un 100 times inflated price.
Given that Adobe can sell afford to sell the font sets at about twenty five cents for each set in the ten license pack, I think a fair price for a single PC license would be anywhere from 700 to one thousand dollars TOPS. Not more than double the price as to what one would pay for an individual font set in a multi user pack. I would buy the complete set if it was in that price range, it would be a lot of money for me but at least it would be a reasonable good will demonstration compromise to sell a single user license for about that price range.
Thomas_...@adobeforums.com
As for the origins of typefaces, the blurb you quote about Venetian old style typefaces is talking about the origins of a category of design. There are scores of distinct and different Venetian old style typefaces out there. I can tell quite a few of them apart just by glancing at them. If I design a new Venetian old style typeface (which in fact I have done in the past), that does not make it less valuable or reduce the amount of work involved.
The basic problem of pricing software is that the price PER COPY to produce the software is very low indeed. However, the initial investment is large indeed. This problem applies to fonts as well. I get the impression that you have no clue what the costs of developing fonts are, but suffice it to say that a high quality typeface family can easily take a person-year or more to develop.
If you would like to learn something about the economics of software development, and high tech business strategy in general, I would strongly recommend the book "Information Rules" by Shapiro and Varian.
Software companies of all sorts routinely give discounts for larger volumes of sales. But given the pricing of individual fonts, there isn't much room to go down to the prices you'd like. Type foundries that have gone that route have generally gone bankrupt or collapsed into much smaller companies, and often stopped doing new development work. Industry-wide reductions in prices due to increased competition have been accompanied by industry-wide reduced profits and industry-wide layoffs.
Beyond that, although I'd love to go further to refute the absurd statements DBS makes about Adobe's pricing, I'd have to get into discussing our market research and pricing experiments and data, which I can't really do. Suffice it to say that DBS's statements are largely unrelated to reality, and that this is demonstrated by the history of the type industry, as well as less public information.
Cheers,
T
Thomas_...@adobeforums.com
As for fair pricing, you're making some assumptions about which price is the "fair" one. If it were possible, perhaps the right thing to do would be to increase the pricing of Font Folio by 100x. :)
Software can be sold at any price above its marginal cost. The thing is, it costs next to nothing to produce an extra unit. But there are big costs in developing the software in the first place, and the company won't even develop the product if the total money to be made doesn't exceed the total costs of the product.
Remember too that fonts are a competitive market and Adobe doesn't have a monopoly, or even a majority of the whole market. If Adobe's pricing were dramatically "wrong" or "stupid" then surely some other brilliant company would come out with the "right" or "smart" price and take tons of market share and make a pile of money. That hasn't happened. Like the market as a whole, individual companies that have radically reduced prices on their fonts have generally not done very well. On the ethical level, most of them have only been able to do such pricing by taking other people's work or designs (sometimes illegally).
If you want to understand the high tech industries in general, and software in particular, I recommend the book "Information Rules" by Shapiro and Varian.
I can't talk about the results of our market research and pricing experiments. However, I can point out that historically, when prices have gone down dramatically for fonts, that has been accompanied by greatly reduced income and lots of layoffs in the type industry.
It's clear that you don't understand much about font classification and type design. Venetian old style is a category of design. Saying that there's something wrong with Adobe developing a new Venetian old style typeface and selling it as an original work is like saying there's something wrong with somebody doing an Impressionist painting today and selling it as an original work.
Even different modern versions of various historical typefaces are radically different from each other and the originals, at least in the eyes of typographers. I can tell a bunch of different "Garamonds" apart at a glance.
Regards,
T
Lan...@adobeforums.com
Lance
D...@adobeforums.com
Why do you think it would harm adobe's profits in the Font Folio product line if they sold a single user license for somewhere from 700 dollars to a grand per single PC? It’s still double (per license) than the ten license pack is (at a thousand). Higher profit.
I think Adobe sales for Font Folio would increase, not decrease. Because more individuals would be able to purchase, in fact I'll bet their sales would skyrocket if they offered a single user license. People who have been waiting for many years would rush out and buy a license (like myself).
The big publishing houses would still buy the multi user licenses because they still have dozens of PC's to install it on.
I don’t see the logic that a single user license for Font Folio would harm Adobe. By that logic, After Effects, Illustrator, etc etc would be in big trouble but those products have been sold for years and years in single licenses and very successfully I might add. And those development teams seem to be doing well, they keep coming out with new versions all the time so apparently no big layoffs are occurring in those groups who create the other big adobe software packages. Why the big deal with Font Folio? Why is it that the only product that Adobe won’t sell a single user license for is Font Folio? It don’t make ANY sense. None.
You say: The thing is, it costs next to nothing to produce an extra unit. But there are big costs in developing the software in the first place, and the company won't even develop the product if the total money to be made doesn't exceed the total costs of the product.
That's all the more reason to sell a single user license then, isn't it? If you don't believe that - why don't you believe it?
Remember too that fonts are a competitive market and Adobe doesn't have a monopoly, or even a majority of the whole market.
Pleeassse. Adobe has been in the font business for PC’s since day one. They may not have a monopoly but they are one of the top two people in the business.
If Adobe's pricing were dramatically "wrong" or "stupid" then surely some other brilliant company would come out with the "right" or "smart" price and take tons of market share and make a pile of money.
Actually I think it is rather dumb because if Adobe had been selling single user licenses for the past 15 years for Font Folio, then maybe Adobe would be a ten billion dollar a year corporation, instead of a 1.3 billion dollar a year corporation.
Like the market as a whole, individual companies that have radically reduced prices on their fonts have generally not done very well.
Ahem, where did I say that Adobe should reduce their price? I said just the opposite. I said that Adobe should sell single licenses at DOUBLE the price that each license costs (if purchased in bulk). I suggested to DOUBLE the price for licenses, not cut prices.
On the ethical level, most of them have only been able to do such pricing by taking other people's work or designs (sometimes illegally).
Well then, that’s just another reason that Adobe should be selling a single license from 700 to a grand, because companies would be less inclined to “steal” Adobes work, Font Folio would be more competitive and affordable and more people would want to buy the real thing instead of crappy imitations.
I can't talk about the results of our market research and pricing experiments. However, I can point out that historically, when prices have gone down dramatically for fonts, that has been accompanied by greatly reduced income and lots of layoffs in the type industry.
Again, where did I ever say that Adobe should reduce the price of Font Folio? I did not.
It's clear that you don't understand much about font classification and type design.
Actually I think that there is pretty poor market research going on at Adobe Corp when it comes to Font Folio. Also it is clear that you don’t understand that I was suggesting that FF should be more, not less expensive. If you can't understand that then how can Adobe corp understand market research? It sounds like the market research for Adobe Font Folio is highly skewed and utilizes twisted logic and has for well over ten years.
There is clearly no logic to not selling a single user license for FF. Also no troll here LK, simply expressing my opinion.
Aandi_...@adobeforums.com
Not really relevant, but I can't let that pass. There are other
example. For instance, Acrobat Elements, which is sold only in units
of 1000 or more.
Aandi Inston
D...@adobeforums.com
Also how is the Acrobat Elements example relevant in this discussion? How does it relate to the above reasoning that a single user, single PC license of Font Folio should (or should not) be released?
Not one person (yet) has logically provided any legitimate reason as to why Adobe Corp. should not release a single user – single PC license for Font Folio.
Aandi_...@adobeforums.com
I mean my reply was not especially relevant. But it was correcting a
factual error, so I felt I had to post it. I'm funny that way. Now,
back to the debate.
I would be interested to read the HISTORY of the licensing terms of
Font Folio. That might cast more light on this area.
Aandi Inston
Dominic...@adobeforums.com
Thomas_...@adobeforums.com
For any good, there is a profit-maximizing price. Total profity being the marginal profit times the quantity. There is always some point at which lowering the price no longer increases demand enough to make up for the reduction in marginal profit.
Let's pretend for a sec that we only have the 10-user version of Font Folio, just to implify things, and that it costs $5,000. Any copy of Font Folio sold today is at that amount.
We introduce the new single-user version at $1,000. Those folks, either operating individually or in groups of who 1-4, who *would* have bought the 10-user version now buy this new less expensive version. So Adobe loses this money.
Additionally, anybody who was spending more either per year or over time on individual font packages has an incentive to get Font Folio instead. This too needs to be factored in.
So, in this scenario Adobe is, indeed, lowering its effective price for individuals and small groups.
You can't deny that the cost *is* lowered for these people, because that's the very incentive you're claiming will cause them to buy more.
The question is, does Adobe gain more money from more Font Folio sales to these people (some people buying who would not have at the higher price), than it loses from the ones who are paying less than they did before, because they either (a) would have bought Font Folio anyway or (b) spent more over time on individual font packages?
Clearly, you believe this is the case. Clearly, Adobe is a lot less sure of this, or such a version of Font Folio would exist already.
One might choose to guess that the new 10-user version of Font Folio is itself an experiment in this very direction, just a lot more cautious than doing a single-user version.
Regards,
T