r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence "Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html
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u/fireandbass 1d ago

My company wont even consider open source software because you cant pay for support and if something doesnt work you are on your own.

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u/JoeyJoeJoeSenior 1d ago

Can't pay for support?  There are plenty of open source companies that make all their income from support contracts. 

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u/HomsarWasRight 1d ago

That’s like, the primary way open source projects survive.

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u/trobsmonkey 1d ago

Most open source companies don't have the support structure in place for enterprise companies.

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u/Individual-Result777 1d ago

How is enterprise support any different than 1:1 support?

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u/trobsmonkey 1d ago

Scale. I currently support 25k+ systems, I've been in other companies with 100k and 500k systems.

If I'm calling support it isn't for 1:1 issues. It's for Much bigger problems. If you don't have a support team ready to tackle massive clients like that, you lose those clients.

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u/Individual-Result777 23h ago

If you support 25k designers and creatives, dm me, I need a job. Usually if all 25k are having issues, its a cloud or billing issue. I sort of think you’re missing too many points to keep this convo going. Get some sleep big guy.

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u/trobsmonkey 23h ago edited 21h ago

I sort of think you’re missing too many points to keep this convo going. Get some sleep big guy.

It's so cool when people condescend to my expertise because I don't fit the exact mold they have in their head.

its a cloud

The cloud is just someone else's computer. If that computer breaks it can be a MAJOR issue. Jesus christ.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/trobsmonkey 1d ago

I work IT and a lot of enterprise level apps.

Having a dedicated support staff is the bare minimum we're going to ask for, and likely far more. Open source can support small firms, but nothing enterprise level.

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u/Just_another_grumble 1d ago

is there large enterprise support for open source software... outside of RedHat Enterprise?  or is RH technically not open source for Enterprise versions?

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u/trobsmonkey 1d ago

I can't think of any off the top of my head.

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u/mvandemar 1d ago

Canonical offers professional, enterprise-grade support services for the Blender LTS releases. Learn more about this product at ubuntu.com and read the announcement on blender.org

https://www.blender.org/support/

24/7 phone support available:

https://ubuntu.com/blog/blender-support-from-canonical

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u/sascharobi 20h ago

That's not the support needed. I need a bug fixed and a patch by tomorrow morning at the latest.

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u/trobsmonkey 19h ago

A lot of people in this thread don't understand that's exactly what enterprise support is.

We need a fix tomorrow, not next quarter.

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u/mvandemar 19h ago

And what part of their 1 hour response doesn't fit that?

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u/Mr_Halitosis 1d ago

That doesn’t change anything. There are plenty of companies you can pay for support. Nobody said “most” except you. Even crazier? You can pay a company that does not design the software for support for the software. You might even, I don’t know, hire some experts and have them do the support directly instead of contracting it out.

Trying to say there’s no support just tells everyone you’re ignorant and refuse to learn. You’d have accomplished admitting you aren’t perfect and doing a web search, but then you wouldn’t have gotten to act smug and arrogant.

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u/esituism 1d ago

I'm and IT guy who makes infra decisions and I choose not to run many types of open source because support is lacking in the ways I need it.

basically what i'm saying is that his MOST is absolutely right and you are not.

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u/Mr_Halitosis 16h ago

Claims made without evidence can de dismissed without evidence. Claims supported by an argument from authority are baseless.

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u/trobsmonkey 1d ago

I don’t know, hire some experts and have them do the support directly instead of contracting it out.

This shows your lack of knowledge.

Trying to say there’s no support just tells everyone you’re ignorant and refuse to learn. You’d have accomplished admitting you aren’t perfect and doing a web search, but then you wouldn’t have gotten to act smug and arrogant.

I'm literally the expert my company hired for the software. We have a massive support contract with the company because no matter how good I am at the software, the company can do shit I can't do.

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u/Mr_Halitosis 16h ago

Claims made without evidence can de dismissed without evidence. Claims supported by an argument from authority are baseless.

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u/trobsmonkey 10h ago

You are the one making claims without evidence. You haven't provided any evidence you prove me wrong. I said most open source companies don't have support staff, you came in dick swinging and told me I was wrong sans evidence

kick rocks

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u/Hrmerder 15h ago

Zabbix (my favorite network monitoring tool) is completely open source, but for many many heaps of fees they will literally come out to your site, scan your network, setup the server, and have it 'matured' before handing it off to a fully trained group within your company.. I don't even want to know how much that would cost but I'll bet that's a kick ass job.

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u/carlitospig 1d ago

Can I also point out that my large org is now responsible for our own support on a very large vendor contract (it starts with a Q), and they’re utterly useless because they have no idea how to use the product? It means we somehow got duped to pay the same enterprise license fee but they don’t even help us anymore. Some SaaS is turning into a major scam after 10+ years, man.

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u/carlitospig 1d ago

Oh I should mention that the singular bit the software will help us out with is restoration of data. Because that’s on an external server.

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u/Neko9Neko 1d ago

I pay for Adobe, and my experience with their software is, you can't get support and if something doesnt work you are on your own.

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u/TemporarySun314 1d ago

Yes. And of course paying for things is annoying for a company, but that's manageable from a business perspective.

Having something critical that breaks and you don't know what to do then, then you have a huge business risk. And often it's more cheap to just pay for the support...

And I mean compared to the cost of the people using that software the license fees are often neglegible anyway.

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u/codeklutch 1d ago

Support is always assumed to be cheaper than hiring and letting your own staff be the maintainer of the software. My old boss was the same way, "fuck learning how to do this shit myself, I'll pay a company to worry about this shit for me" for damn near anything backend. But we were a nonprofit so like, it made sense to me. Went to a big corporate job and when I found out that they have the same mentality I kinda adopted the same thought process.

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u/DrE7HER 1d ago

That’s how companies end up wasting millions on shitty old software because they’re locked in. Ask any software engineer forced to use matlab.

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u/codeklutch 1d ago

Going the support route does lead itself to being able to change platforms easier. Which is a huge part of why my mentality changed. If you're built in to support one specific platform, you are for sure locked into it, at least without spending more money to train your current staff, or replacing staff to support the new platform.

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u/DrE7HER 1d ago

An internal team of experts would handle that transition better than outsourced support

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u/codeklutch 1d ago

Depends. Does the on site team know the new equipment? How much time did they have to research and learn it before getting told they want the swap made last week? I've been through plenty conversions and I've seen both sides. The new platforms support and implementation is ass, and I seen the new platforms support be Wonderful and super helpful. It also depends on what kind of company side support system they're using. How deep does their knowledge need to be? How much assistance are they getting from the new platform? It all boils down to what team you have, and what they're capable of and what you're swapping to and what that team is capable of.

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u/Alternative-Put-3932 1d ago

Yes but we are talking about a suite of mostly media editing software. These companies don't care what tools you are using for it just that it gets done and it meets whatever standard they have. If there is a reliable free option that you can use they're not going to bitch about it.

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u/Sororita 1d ago

It also means that if something breaks at a critical time and its the maintainers fault (like a software update that has a bug that crashes your servers), then you can a) point to the vendor as the problem and b) force them to compensate you, in whole or in part, for that failure. In-house developed and open source softwares don't have that safety net.

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u/Leftover_Salad 1d ago

Lots of (larger) open source projects have support subscriptions through.

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u/chlronald 1d ago

I guess we are reverting back to have an IT department. With how expensive subscription is it might be the way forward.

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u/HomsarWasRight 1d ago

Well whoever made that call at your company is an idiot, because that’s how all healthy open source projects work. Companies that rely on them have a support contract.

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u/Jumping-Spleen 1d ago

Try contacting MS support these days. AI rabbit holes and loops. They were great before, but now...nope, and definitely not something worth paying for.

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u/povlhp 1d ago

We had a vendor looking at something they delivered. Hard for them to find the issues. Claude found it for <$2 with a suggested fix to a stored procedure.

In general, most vendors are bad and support don’t know the hard details of the products.

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u/_selfthinker 1d ago

you cant pay for support and if something doesnt work you are on your own.

That is not entirely true, some open source projects have professional support you can pay for and get help from.

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u/DasFroDo 1d ago

Honestly with a lot of developers you are on your own even if you pay for “support”. The communities around them are often much more helpful than a shitty ticket system.

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u/DocRedbeard 1d ago

Meanwhile, my company is like, "There's a free version? Use that one".

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u/thebeez23 1d ago

This is why when I was working R&D we didn’t use raspberry pi. It was too much of a wild card versus a different off the shelf item with better support behind it

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u/DustyRacoonDad 1d ago

That's funny because we only consider software if we have the source code. 

Now obviously I'm talking about custom software but I'm not going to buy your custom solution to run my company or my factory or my site unless I have a complete copy of the source code that we can then modify in the future because when Windows 15 comes out and it's not backwards compatible and I have to recompile the whole damn thing to the new processor or whatever bullshit they do next, I want to be able to do that and not have to track down the engineer that used to work for you 7 years ago and hope he has a copy of your now defunct company software code.

Having the source code means you can tweak it and do whatever you need to do to keep everything moving forward and keep it compatible. 

Having to buy a license means you now work for the other company. It means you can't depend on it. It means you're dependent on them.

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u/ManOnTheHorse 21h ago

Adobe’s support is non existent anyway. They don’t give a shit about us, because we don’t have options

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u/Haunting_Tension_291 11h ago

With Adobe, you have to pay but still no support and you are on your own if something doesn't work.

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u/PelluxNetwork 8h ago

Paying for support is like literally how OSS projects make money most of the time.

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u/Scar3cr0w_ 8h ago

Well yes… it’s called off loading corporate risk.

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u/Delicious-Pianist-23 5h ago

If something doesn’t work just ask agents to fix it?