As in god help you if you ever need to resolve a dispute with Adobe, whether you screwed up or they did. I think they have several dark patterns baked into their servicing and support flow. Like it’s so bad it must have taken work. I don’t often think of companies as assholes, but Adobe is right there.

But yeah, I can see the year-long commitment for line of business apps as pretty rational, but for commodity tooling software, it seems like there’s room for more competitive subscription terms, like maybe 30-day adjustment windows after initial/renewal billing event, or 5-10% flexibility in license commitment over the term, things like that. Like everything, small businesses feel the pain of these things more acutely than large corps., so maybe it’s a matter of designing targeted/qualified price plans that think more like an actuarial. Pay a buck extra per seat but have more flexibility, with the idea that the majority of customers are on point the majority of the time?