Straight from the old Big Tabacco playbook of traps. Give away free stuff to get you addicted while in school and then when you are out they start profiting on your bad habbit you are hard to get rid off. Better to use software that is free for ever and even better if it is also free as in freedom and opensource.
IMHO, this has more to do with competition from open source apps like Penpot. If they don’t have a free tier for students, students will get accustomed and to the alternative.
It’s always been Adobe’s approach - get em hooked, snuff out competition (or just straight up acquire them), push educators toward materials that are software specific instead of more conceptual, then push for sales to new grads and sue firms using bootleg versions.
After using Figma a fair bit at work and Penpot at home, man the Penpot team is really doing some cool work that I can see rivalling Figma in no time
Straight from the old Big Tabacco playbook of traps. Give away free stuff to get you addicted while in school and then when you are out they start profiting on your bad habbit you are hard to get rid off. Better to use software that is free for ever and even better if it is also free as in freedom and opensource.
And when everyone uses or is forced to use the product, they can actively start enshitifying it and squeeze every penny of their users…
IMHO, this has more to do with competition from open source apps like Penpot. If they don’t have a free tier for students, students will get accustomed and to the alternative.
It’s always been Adobe’s approach - get em hooked, snuff out competition (or just straight up acquire them), push educators toward materials that are software specific instead of more conceptual, then push for sales to new grads and sue firms using bootleg versions.
After using Figma a fair bit at work and Penpot at home, man the Penpot team is really doing some cool work that I can see rivalling Figma in no time