Birth of a Zealot

Oh, I can feel it.. I’m on the verge of joining the masses and becoming an “open source zealot”. It used to be that I had faith in certain large software companies. It used to be that, if I paid out my hard earned cash to buy their highly overpriced software that they would in turn take care of me and do what they could to support me as a customer..

Oh, how naive was I

A few years ago, I gained a sense of sanity and switched my operating system of choice to Apple OSX. Windows had ran rampant enough over my life and free time and I got tired of fighting with it. I made the switch and have been deleriously happy since then. However, conversion apparently comes with a cost.

Last night I decided that it was time to go ahead and get a license of Dreamweaver 8. The enhanced CSS features alone made it worth it to buy it (in my mind at least) and I have an existing license of Ultradev from a few years ago. Unforutnately, that license is for the PC. Not to fret, I sent an email to Macromedia/Adobe customer support asking if it would be possible to upgrade my PC Ultradev license to OSX Dreamweaver 8. The response:

Hello ****,

Thank you for contacting Customer Service at Macromedia, now part of Adobe Systems.

We appreciate your support for our products.

Please note that we do not offer cross-platform upgrade because Macromedia software is platform specific. Since you have Dreamweaver UltraDev for Windows you are only allowed to purchase an upgrade for Windows if you wish to upgrade to Dreamweaver 8.

You need to buy the full version if you intend to use the software on a Macintosh operating system. For your purchase options, please go to:

http://www.macromedia.com/buy/

Should you have other concerns, please contact us again.

Regards,

**** ******
Customer Service
Macromedia, now part of Adobe Systems

Now, that just burns me up. Platform specific? Well, no shit… Back in the day when upgrades relied on an existing installed codebase that might have been a good argument. However, today’s “upgrades” are really just full versions with a seperate authentication step embedded into the install process. In most cases you dont even need to have the previous version of a program installed in order to upgrade, you just need the serial number.

This is just another example of Big Money Grubbing Bastardism. Companies like Adobe or Macromedia aren’t out to support their users, they’re out to squeeze them for every frakkin cent they can. Fortunately, there still some companies out there that don’t do this, like E-Frontier, who let me upgrade AND crossgrade my license of Poser 2 on the PC to Poser 6 on the mac. Now THAT is supporting your users. Some companies go even one step further and give their customers installers for BOTH platforms on the same disk when they buy. Not Adobe, not Microsoft, and now not Macromedia.

So, as my tirade ends, I am seeing the beauty of open source software. Its premise is simpe: Software SHOULD be free. The days of open-source programs being little more than toys is going away. A few years ago, the GIMP was having to work hard to catch up to Photoshop. Now, Adobe is having to work hard to keep Photoshop ahead of the GIMP.

As far as Macromedia goes: I’m sending them a response email, citing the ticket number they assigned to my request. I’ll be polite, but I will explain that penalizing me for switching my operating system is a crock. Further, if they dont want my money, thats fine. I’ll just use NVu

….