@dangillmor I probably can - I only have an Acrobat subscription and a bunch of what I have stored in their "cloud" is copyrighted material that I've paid for.
I'm probably also going to cancel my Office 365 subscription. I don't use it enough to justify it.
@AlgoCompSynth @dangillmor Yes and no. You’re absolutely right, but corporate IT often makes decisions based on what people are familiar with. MS Office achieved dominance because everyone who owned a computer had a pirated copy of Word at home in the ‘90s and schools had free or very heavily discounted copies. If you hired a new person, odds are that they knew Word. Google Docs being free for individuals displaced this at home (even though they’ve somehow managed a task I previously believed was impossible and made a word processor that is worse than MS Word).
It won’t be fast, but if you start getting a generation of people entering the workforce with no Windows or MS Office experience, it’s far less obviously a good idea to buy MS products.
@cdlhamma @dangillmor I have yet to find a replacement for Indesign. For all other Adobe tools I have other products that do what I need, but something that handles text and CMYK in a decent way is it very hard to find.
I use a lot of LaTeX, which is great for automated typesetting, but LaTeX and Indesign are polar opposites when it comes to manual control, which is crucial when making for example, posters.
@dangillmor Worth mentioning that pretty much every hosted mail or file sharing service has terms like these. I just spot checked Gmail, Office 365, Dropbox, iCloud (and probably Box, but I ran out of steam).
You would have to switch over to the encryption-centric services like Proton Mail and Proton Drive, I guess.
@dangillmor This only applies to content you upload to their cloud. I think they try to get new users to default to saving to their cloud instead of to disk (?) but if that option ever came up for me I dismissed it immediately. None of my files are in their cloud, though I use their software. My content is not used for IA by Adobe, though surely others scrape it from my website.
Don’t upload your files to their servers or do any “sync” through them.
@johnlehet @dangillmor Well, this is easily tested:
Close the window without clicking Agree. Does Photoshop still launch? After all, all you've allegedly cut off is your access to Adobe Cloud. You should still be able to open local files.
If it turns out you can't, and Photoshop petulantly refuses to launch, then someone's lying to you about it just being about cloud content.
@ewhac @dangillmor I did not get that agreement to click, in spite of using Photoshop and Lightroom today, and updating them as well. I have no files in their cloud.
I think more interesting would be to look at Little Snitch (on Mac) while working and see whether Adobe is using a lot of bandwidth scanning. I don’t think they are looking at local files.
Recently for a brochure I used their “AI Fill” to extend a photo (water at bottom) to fit in the panel. That, I’m sure, went to their cloud.
@dangillmor I’m an Adobe stock holder from the 90s, but as ever I will take this as a sign to pimp Affinity tools (30 day trial) whom I have zero affiliation with, lol. Perpetual license, can usually get all three for like $120 once or twice a year during sales.
You can read/save PSD and AI files. Can import IDML files too.
@dangillmor Have a look at this thread for some suggestions for Adobe alternatives:
🧵 [1/3] Affinity has been bought by Canva, to compete with Adobe. It was of course a matter of time before Affinity would outgrow its status of sympathetic small-scale Adobe alternative, and be sold for large proceeds. Canva is into AI. Hopefully Affinity will get some useful AI-powered image processing tools, like upscalers and denoisers, but Canva will probably add generative shit and introduce subscriptions sooner or later. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/canva-acquires-affinity-design-suite-004813952.html #canva #adobe #affinity #GraphicDesign
@dangillmor voiding a portion of private ownership and rights in socialism/communism for benefit of the whole country is one thing,... (not that I like it)
But, voiding of private ownership and rights for benefit of a privately owned company is crazy.
Is "freedom" in capitalism any better, for ordinary people, than in communism?
Well, IMO yes, but as long as pockets of capitalist elites are filled. And, who knows where they stop with their greed,... Will it turn to be worse than communism?
Use open source whenever possible… stuff like this is really unacceptable…
@dangillmor Adobe has no motivation to stop shitting on their clients like this: their clients seem to have no issue coming back and giving them money again year after year.
Meanwhile, developers involved in more honest endeavours barely get any funding at all.
@dangillmor not taking sides, but just for awareness
https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/06/06/clarification-adobe-terms-of-use
Dan Gillmor
ferricoxide
jaryl
ewhac
UnWorld
Alan Bristow
Evan
Lars 
Zorro Notorious MEB 🪷🪷🪷
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
Luis Vazquez
Al ⁂
Sterling Hammer 
Magnus Ahltorp
Craig Moore
neil okamoto
john lehet
heavyboots
Vektorgarten
rexi
cousinDanny
Metin Seven 🎨
TomasHradcky
Miroslav Kravec
RolingMetal
Andrew 📪🐾🥃🍺💻🐧🎯
PictoPulse356
captain
🇵🇸 Álvaro González
Fernando del Amo
xs4me2
Hugo 雨果
Graeme 🏴
GuerillaGrue
johnoestmannmusic
stib
huxley(fur) / Laelia
Daniele10
Danyarelkhodari