[scribus] Adobe ends perpetual licenses

[John Jason Jordan]

On Thu, 9 May 2013 22:43:10 +0100
Antonio Roberts <antonio at hellocatfood.com> dijo:

>> Maybe this is a bit off place, but: isn't this the perfect time to
>> release a campaing like the one did by OpenShot

>Hopefully those who care enough about "owning" software will start to
>consider all the alternatives of which Scribus etc is one

I have been subscribed to the InDesign listserve for many years. The
average is four or five posts a day. In the past several days since this
news broke there have been well over a hundred posts. And Scribus has
been mentioned in 10-20% of them. 

There are numerous problems to overcome if you want designers to switch
from InDesign to Scribus:

1) Comfort zone: They don't want to have to learn where the buttons for
things are in Scribus. 

2) Their clients use InDesign and expect native InDesign files.

3) There is no one responsible for Scribus, no one to blame if
something goes wrong.

4) No formal tech support. You can't pick up your phone and call
someone.

5) Many InDesign installations are on computers owned by large
organizations, corporations, government agencies, universities. My own
university has the Adobe suite on graduate student computer labs, but
not on undergraduate computer labs. Even Openoffice was recently
removed from undergraduate computer labs. Why? Lack of human
resources to support it and lack of computer hardware - not enough disk
space to handle the latest versions of Windows/MacOS and MS Office.
Asking the IT department to install Scribus, of which they know zero,
is not likely to be effective.

I'm not saying we should not keep pushing. And right now is a good time
to give a serious shove. But realistically we have an uphill battle
against commercial software.