Adobe CEO avoids a question about why its priced $1400 more in Australia | Hacker News Reader

Adobe CEO avoids a question about why its priced $1400 more in Australia

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34 pointsthewarrior9 comments

1. He handled it poorly, I think he could have just answered more directly and it wouldn't have looked bad.

2. I don't see why people are so upset about it. Obviously the reason they charge 1400 more is because when they put that price tag in Australia, australians still buy it. What happened to free market?

"It's the free market," does not sate a desire for fairness.

It does though. People have the option to steal, lease or buy adobe products and adobe has the right to price them how they wish. I think they have probably calculated that demand is inelastic and the people who buy it are largely professionals and companies who find a few hundred a gripe but not a deal breaker. The rest probably just steal it or use sketch or something. I have to imagine someone did the math, but it sucks if you live in Australia, don't like Sketch and can't/won't use a proxy or torrent.

In your mind, it should sate. But their stating, "this isn't fair" means it hasn't.

> Adobe has the right to price products how they wish.

In a free market, they must (for a loose definition of "must") withstand commentary they get for their actions.

.psd is not an open file format.

https://www.adobe.com/devnet-apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml...

What happened to the free market is that it isn't (a free market). It's illegal in many places to reverse-engineer the .psd file format - and there are many places where even if it's not illegal the potential lawyer costs are so prohibitive that it may as well be.

Adobe has made the file format available on the web, it's in the top three results from Google.

> Adobe has made the file format available on the web

Good for them. Nonetheless, my point stands. In many places, it is illegal to reverse-engineer file formats, and in many places it isn't illegal but may as well be due to the potential costs of determining that it is legal.

(For instance, "The information in this document is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by Adobe Systems Incorporated. ". What happens if/when they pull said document?)

(Also: note that them documenting their file format is not the same thing as there being no potential liability for anyone to use said info.)

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