Quote:
Originally Posted by lexaudio
Agreed. I'm getting this feeling that AVID is trying to do away with perpetual licenses and make it subscription/rental only.
Which is what had me worried about buying HD Hardware in the future. And I'm not the only one feeling that way either.
When accountants are running the show, the user looses. And the way it looks, we are losing.
PT12 doesn't bring much to the table. The music community, through a friend well plugged in, said they weren't happy. He said, "dead set against PT12", as there is nothing added they want or need.
Keeping data on the cloud is also not popular especially with high profile projects.
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I'm getting this feeling that AVID is trying to do away with perpetual licenses and make it subscription/rental only.
Could be, but personally, I doubt it...
Accounting-wise, there is no problem with perpetual licenses per se...the problem is the de facto "open-ended" service contract created by Avid's maintenance/updating process.
(Note regarding the following...this gets into some accounting methods/rules/whatever that I do not know much about. I am not an accountant, nor do I have a business-related degree. But, for most of my career my day-job has been in what one might term "ordinary" business...companies that make stuff or offer services. In IT, you tend to learn a little about a lot of things in order to write the appropriate software. So, some of this next little bit is not something I've extensively studied...it's just stuff I've picked up on as part of my day job. And some of this may be incorrect.)
Suppose I have a company that makes hammers, and sells them directly to consumers via the Internet.
The hammers I sell are well-designed and well-built...good quality tools that come with a one-year warranty...I sell them for $10.00...it costs me $7.00 to make them.
So, it would appear that every time I sell a hammer I would make a profit of $3.00. But, there's that pesky one-year warranty, and, as I understand it, I would need to hold some part of the $3.00 profit
in reserve to cover the cost of warranty repairs and replacements. Let's suppose it's $0.25 per hammer.
So, when I sold a hammer, I could only "count" $2.75 as profit. But, since the warranty was only for a year, after that year was up, I could "count" the $0.25 as profit.
(Again, this is a greatly simplified explanation, it may not be 100% correct, and it may not be applicable to Avid. But I personally believe it's pretty close...)
In my hammer company's case, since I only offered a one-year warranty, I only had to hold the
reserve for one year.
But, in Avid's case, they were selling products that had a de facto "open-ended" service plan that lasted forever ("open-ended"). If they weren't "accounting" for reserves or whatever in accordance with "accepted standards", they could/would have problems.
But, by moving to a "service plan" model, Avid moved to a "fixed-term" support agreement, and got away from the previous "open-ended" contracts.
(I believe the "rental" thing that Avid is also doing may be due to the changing market, but a "rental's" service contract is also "fixed-term"...limited to the length of the "rental".
This is why I keep "going on" about the accounting issues...it's only by understanding them can the user appreciate what's going on.
There's more, but I have other things to do right now...perhaps I'll post some additional info another time...
(And again, it's all just my personal opinion and belief)