Software as a service (SaaS) and software subscriptions are the licensing methods that increasingly are preferred by companies. They offer advantages for users and for developers, but some users are vehemently opposed to either concept. If you're in that group, there may be viable alternatives.
The term "software as a service" is generally used to describe software that is cloud-based, but sometimes is applied to computer-based applications that carry subscription fees. Most of the Adobe applications, for example, are subscription based and most run on the user's computer. The internet is required only for occasional license verification. These applications and Microsoft's Office 365 are more accurately described as subscription-based software. Chromebooks, on the other hand, use on-line resources for most of the applications.
For this article, let's just consider both to be "rental software" and avoid the differences between the delivery methods. Previously, applications were licensed on a perpetual basis so that users could purchase a license for a program, install it, and then continue using it without additional charge. Users normally received free updates for the life of the version. That is, licensing Foonblatt 2.3 would include upgrades to Foonblatt 2.4, Foonblatt 2.5, and Foonblatt 2.6; but the user would need to pay an upgrade fee to obtain Foonblatt 3.0. The user who was satisfied with Foonblatt 2.6 could continue to use it even after the developer released new versions.
In the perpetual license method, developers provided new features every 18 months to 2 years; with rental software, new features are released whenever they're deemed to be ready for use. Adobe frequently shows sneak-peeks to show features that are in development and subscribers have access to the new features without having to wait for months. That's an advantage for both users and developers -- users because they can start using new features sooner and developers because they receive more timely feedback from users.
Software developers know that a lot of users want new features, which is why they continue to add new features. Obviously, though, these new features can't be created without developers and software developers seem to want to be paid. Many years ago, Wordperfect offered support forever without a fee. As the user base grew, so did the cost of support. Eventually, Wordperfect collapsed and was acquired by Corel. The Wordperfect Office Suite offered by Corel uses a perpetual model, but also includes an effort to have users sign up for a subscription.
Rental software is often the best choice for large- and medium-size companies, but smaller organizations and individuals can find the monthly fees to be annoying. In general, the monthly rental fee usually turns out to be less than or equal to the cost of updates every year and a half or two years. That assumes the the user will obtain every update and users of major applications found that they could purchase every other update -- versions 3, 5, 7, and 9 instead buying each update.
So there's no one-size-fits-all solution. If you prefer the rental option, that's great because we'll see more of that every year. If you detest the rental option, finding an alternative solution might be challenging.
Open-source applications and alternative commercial applications almost always omit some of the features that are present in the top-flight commercial applications. After all, there are reasons why the top commercial programs are the top commercial programs. In addition to having more robust feature sets, these are the applications that are best known and usually have more complete documentation and support.
If you're willing to pay for a set of office applications, Wordperfect Office from Corel would be a good choice. Wordperfect still has a substantial foothold in law offices and it's not (yet) a rental application.
WPS Office is available in a rental program, but there's also a free version that includes word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications. It also displays ads and if you want them to go away, you'll need to choose the rental plan. The annual rental ($30) can be run on 3 computers and 6 mobile devices.
Google Docs is a good choice. Some versions are free and others have a minimal fee ($5 to $25 per year). The applications -- Docs, Sheets, and Slides -- can be accessed on any device that has a browser.
Apache Open Office and LibreOffice are similar and both originated in code from StarOffice, a German program that Sun Microsystems acquired in 1999. Sun was taken over by Oracle and StarOffice was spun off as the open source OpenOffice. Problems with Oracle led the developers to create the Document Foundation and they created a fork of OpenOffice code to create LibreOffice. OpenOffice is now part of Apache. There are more similarities than differences, but LibreOffice supports embedded fonts so that text will display properly even if a typeface isn't available on the destination computer. LibreOffice also supports writing Office Open XML format files; OpenOffice can read these Microsoft-format files, but can't write them.
Acronis True Image has two versions: One includes cloud-based storage and the other backs up only to local devices. There are cloud-based applications and applications that can use external USB drives, a friend's computer, or DVDs. I'm a fan of using both an on-line service such as CrashPlan for Small Business and local backups like GoodSync. In recent years, several free backup applications have been released, some with paid versions that offer more features. Among these are Comodo Backup, AOMEI Backupper Standard, EaseUS Todo Backup, and Cobian Backup. Some offer disk imaging, others do only file and folder backup, and some do both.
Companies such as OnOne and Alien Skin that previously created plug-ins for Photoshop have added stand-alone capabilities that allow them to be used to manage photographs and make the kinds of modifications that are handled by Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom. These applications use perpetual licenses. The open source Raw Therapee is also worth considering.
Affinity Photo, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer, and GNU Image Manipulation Program are primarily competitors for Photoshop. GIMP is an open source application. Xara Designer Pro is a better choice for those who also need an application that can be used for design work, publishing, and website development.
Affinity Designer, Xara Designer Pro, and Inkscape are alternatives to Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape is an open-source application.
Scribus (currently being reworked as Affinity Publisher) is about the only serious alternative to Adobe InDesign. No further development is anticipated for this application, but the code is being rewritten as Affinity Publisher so that it will be part of the Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer suite of applications. A beta had been planned for 2017, but now Scribus simply says that it will be ready when it's ready.
Two open-source video editors that can be used in place of Premiere Pro are ShotCut and Lightworks. As with many (but not all) of the open-source applications, these two have versions for Windows, the MacOS, and Linux.
In addition to commercial applications such as Xara Designer Pro and on-line website building services such as Wix, Web.com, and SiteBuilder, there are open-source website designers such as Aptana and BlueFish, and the low-cost commercial CoffeeCup HTML Editor.
Only one viable alternative exists for Adobe Audition. The open-source Audacity comes with a useful on-line manual, but needs a variety of plug-ins (also open source) to be a usable editor.
On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission acted against the wishes of most Americans to repeat the Net Neutrality rule. More than 80% of voters oppose the Federal Communications Commission's vote and there's very little difference of opinion between Republicans, Democrats, and independents. According to a poll by the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation: 75% of Republicans, 89% of Democrats, and 86% of independents support Net Neutrality.
Internet Service Providers are currently required to provide customers access to all websites on the internet without giving any websites faster or slower download speeds. The ISPs are not allowed to charge websites for faster download speeds or to charge customers a fee to visit specific websites.
Eliminating the Net Neutrality rule eliminates those protections.
State attorneys general from California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington have already announced plans to sue.
Also, the Congressional Review Act gives Congress the ability to nullify actions by agencies such as the FCC. After all, the FCC is a regulatory agency that was set up by Congress. Given the fact that a majority of voters support Net Neutrality, you might think this outcome would be automatic.
Don't count on it, though. Dollars from lobbyists speak louder than votes from constituents and the big ISPs make huge contributions to nearly every member of congress and senator. If you support Net Neutrality, and most people say that they do, now might be a very good time to write letters to your elected officials. Sometimes enough pressure from voters beats cash from lobbyists.
The so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh -- take your pick) has been successful in using the internet to create followers and to debase the religion they claim to support. The organization also is attempting to create havoc on the internet. NATO has other ideas.
As an aside, let's first consider ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh. IS, ISIS, and ISIL are the most commonly used terms for the "Islamic State", but Daesh is an alternative. It's an acronym for the Arabic phrase al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). The leaders of the Islamic State don't like the term "Daesh" because it sounds a lot like two other Arabic words: Daes (one who crushes something underfoot) and dahes (one who sows discord). Both of those are accurate descriptions for the Islamic State, but its leaders don't like being described this way.
In noting the Obama administration's work to counter the Islamic State's social media presence, the Council on Foreign Relations said that the US government and companies can counter the Islamic State's on-line onslaught through policies anchored in important liberal principles, namely protection of free speech, transparency, and accountability.
The Council on Foreign Relations noted that the Islamic State is more strategic on-line, that it demonstrates greater social media sophistication, and operates in cyberspace on a larger scale and intensity than previous terrorist groups. Its on-line propaganda is linked with radicalized individuals traveling to fight in Syria and Iraq or committing "lone-wolf" terrorism in the West.
Cyber threats also come from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. All this has caused NATO to think more about weapons that can be used on the internet. Defense ministers from NATO countries have approved a command structure that includes a new cyber operations center.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says that cyber-weapon tactics would be preferred to physical and military threats and that these might be the best option for security. Citing efforts to fight ISIS, Stoltenberg said that NATO's goal is to use minimum force for maximum effect. Given those objectives, he said that cyber effects may be the best response.
Following the 2016 NATO summit in Warsaw, Stoltenberg says that the organization began looking more seriously at cyber options. NATO will work with national governments to integrate cyber into existing military options. Member nations will maintain ownership and control of their cyber weapons and Stoltenberg says that integrating capabilities from many nations into NATO missions strengthens NATO's capabilities.
The future: Looks like a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Earlier today I listed various applications that can be used in place of rental software such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud. At the time, I mentioned one of the advantages of rental software is immediate updates. This week Adobe updated several applications and those updates serve to illustrate the advantages.
Two versions of Lightroom exist: Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC. I haven't yet been able to make the cloud-based Lightoom CC my friend even though it supports both desktop and portable applications on Windows, MacOS, IOS, and Android systems. For me, the classic version is the better choice.
Adobe's Sharad Mangalick, who is a senior product manager on the Digital Imaging team says that the entire Lightroom CC ecosystem, including for Mac, Windows, IOS, Android, and the web have been updated. This includes updates to Lightroom Classic CC and Adobe Camera Raw. There's also support for new cameras and lenses and some new features.
You might wonder about updates for new cameras and why that's important. It's critical if you shoot raw images. Adobe created the DNG (digital negative) format, but most camera manufacturers continue to release cameras that create raw images in a format that's known only to the manufacturer. Files from a Nikon D200 won't match those from a Nikon D850. Files from a Canon 60D won't match those from a Canon SX530. So it's essential that the application you use with raw photo images is able to work with the files from your camera.
If you shoot only jpeg images, that's not important. But those who shoot raw need to have an application that can understand the files created by your camera. Adobe Camera Raw (and, therefore, Adobe Lightroom) support hundreds of raw formats from dozens of camera manufacturers. Adobe is usually quicker to add new formats than are other vendors. Adobe also supports 1000 or more lenses. This is important when it comes to correcting problems that exist with zoom lenses.
The most important improvement, I think, involves the Lightroom "auto" corrections. In previous versions, the auto corrections weren't very good. Even so, many people who taught Adobe applications suggested the auto option. Results were always too bright and too contrasty. Now they're much better. Maybe not perfect, but much closer to where I'd want the final image to be.
Mangalick also notes improvements in Lightroom's tone curve functionality. "The Tone Curve is one of the most popular tools used by photographers for advanced control over the tonality, contrast, and color balance of an image. You can use either the parametric curve or the point curve modes to tune the tonality and contrast of the image, and the red, green, and blue modes to adjust the color balance and stylize your image."
These changes are important for Photoshop users, too, because they affect Adobe Camera Raw. Lightroom, in fact, is actually Adobe Camera Raw with a different interface and a file management system, so any change made to Adobe Camera Raw also affects Lightroom.
Lightroom has two versions -- Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC. The Classic version stores images on the user's computer while the new version stores all images in the cloud and makes cross-platform editing possible. Lightroom Classic CC updates include a refinement to the Color Range Masking tool and the ability to more easily remove individual sample points, as well as support for tethered capture with the Nikon D850 camera. Several significant improvements have been made to Lightroom CC on various platforms:
The Creative Cloud app should remind you that the updates are available.
