> Yearly sales cycles create a toxic incentive to focus engineering time on flashy demo-friendly features
I understand that argument, but what incentive does DRM with a killswitch create for the software company, if its customers must pay in order to keep the product running at all? Might it not create different perverse incentives, for example trying to close the ecosystem in order to make a switch a painful experience?
Or in other words: What incentive to improve the software (other than the threat from competitors) does subscription DRM provide, if you can just collect the rent, because the cost of switching is too high anyway and the customers are at your mercy?
Very fair point, and believe me I heard it from a lot of users. My answer is (was), the pressure to improve has always been from competitors, and that doesn't change under a subscription model. I know people tend to see Photoshop as an endless monopoly, but actually tons of rivals pop up and get users in significant numbers (e.g. Sketch), and they do it by being lightweight and flexible. And if Photoshop just kept being huge and adding on ten more huge features per year it would inevitably become a relic, if not by losing old users then definitely by failing to attract new ones.
Not to dismiss your point though - it's absolutely possible that the company gets complacent and stops innovating and collects rent. I just don't think anything really stops people from ditching Adobe if that happens. In this sense I think people overestimate the tools' intrinsic value and underestimate the value of the updates each year. That is, I like Photoshop better than its competitors today, and I felt the same way three years ago, but between a three year-old version of PS and its competitors today I'd switch in a second, and I think many others would too. In other words, the only reason PS maintains its monopoly-like dominance is that it's kept innovating, and if one side of that equation changes the other will too.
With that said, playing devil's advocate against myself, one big argument against what I'm saying here is lock-in from file formats like PSD - if people subscribe and make PSD files, the risk of losing work if they switched tools removes some of the pressure on Adobe to innovate. At the time of the CC switch Adobe said they would come out with some way to make sure people don't get locked out of their files, but I don't know if anything happened with that or not. A lot of tools support PSD these days so maybe it's not a hot issue but I think it's worth keeping in mind.
Sorry to go to such length but I hope that answers your question.
I understand that argument, but what incentive does DRM with a killswitch create for the software company, if its customers must pay in order to keep the product running at all? Might it not create different perverse incentives, for example trying to close the ecosystem in order to make a switch a painful experience?
Or in other words: What incentive to improve the software (other than the threat from competitors) does subscription DRM provide, if you can just collect the rent, because the cost of switching is too high anyway and the customers are at your mercy?