Adobe Flex Builder 3 Professional for unemployed developers | Hacker News Reader

Adobe Flex Builder 3 Professional for unemployed developers

freeriatools.adobe.com

35 pointschaostheory14 comments

They initially ran this promotion for students and teachers, now for unemployed developers. Why not just run this same promotion for non-commercial use (i.e. us developers that like to learn new things on our own time but that are still employed)? It would get further market penetration for flex builder which this is obviously intended to accomplish.

Even though I'm gainfully employed I'm not going to go out of my way to buy a $300 (last time I looked) tool to learn how to program ActionScript if it's not part of my daily job already. I'd like to learn it mostly for curiosity but then if it works out well maybe I'd push for it at work which is where Adobe would then make real money.

I suppose I could just lie on the form also but would rather just see them do a personal developer license promotion.

I think this is a brilliant move. Use up people's time, and give them an activity that benefits both your company and themselves. I see a big oportunity here for startups too!

I think it's brilliant, too, but it seems kind of unscrupulous... kind of a double standard, you know? I'm a working person, so I have to shell out the money, while some schmuck that lost his job can have fun without paying. But I guess that's what you get when you sell "software". You can price it and license it however you want because it costs nothing to copy.

Of course there's a double standard! The ideal for a company is to charge everyone exactly what they'd be willing to pay. Companies usually do this with coupons and such -- if they have one buyer who is going to buy for X no matter what, and another buyer who would only pay .9X, they find a way to give the second one a coupon that the first one will ignore. Universities and used-car dealers are especially good at this.

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The term for this is price discrimination. Once you start looking for it, it's hard to stop: especially in luxury products like wine, jets, and investment banking (millions of dollars for "Why, yes, that is a sensible acquisition!" is clearly a luxury product), the entire game is to find people willing to pay ten times as much for the same goods, and figuring out how to make them pay it.

Well, at least in my country (and I bet in most), unemployed people get a "salary" from the government (according to how much they've worked previously) and they have access to free courses and some benefits to help them while they are looking for their next job. The courses are meant to help them learn or refresh skills they might need for future jobs.

How is this different? :)

It's not the government, it's a company. The government wants to help you get back on your feet, Adobe wants you addicted to their product.

Maybe this is different for me because I think of flash and flex as fun and not a job-related technology.

Well it's an integral part of Adobe AIR and that's a viable job-related technology.

thepiratebay has been doing this for years

"Underemployed developers or ones who had to take a lousy job for whatever reason: you won't get any help from us."

Free drug samples for small guys. Too bad the drug quality is poor.

Any specific reason why you think Eclipse based Flex Builder is of poor quality?

I own a copy and I use the free Flash Develop. It's not any one thing in particular, it's just that it has inherited that big and Enterprisey clutter from Eclipse without any of the powerful tools (the exception is the profiler, which is very good and the reason why I own a copy, but that only comes out for a day at the end of a game development cycle). I'd rather command line compile than use Flex Builder for day to day tasks.

Innovative marketing ...

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