I think it's much more likely to just drive them to piracy.

I see over 20 torrents for "Adobe Acrobat Pro DC 2019.012...".

Maybe some are honeypots, but probably not all.

You don't mean Gimp I hope.

I'd rather use Photoshop 1998 than Gimp.

I'd rather use something that nobody can arbitrarily take from me any time they please.

I've been using GIMP since I was 9 years old mate, I've tried using Photoshop and I find it to be a nightmare, can you even get GMIC on Photoshop? It's all just a matter of what you first used.

I'd rather use gimp than photoshop.

Photoshop, ergg.. what a confusing tool!, who would use a 'cloud service' for your important data.. lol.

Because it actually works.

photopea.com is pretty great and doesn't require you to install anything. Ever since I found it I never used gimp anymore. I'm only use it for light editing though (light touch up, removing background, etc), so I have no idea if it can replace photoshop for professional users.

Yes, I like it but it's probably not powerful enough for professionals.

For desktop SW that will work. What won’t work is google apps and office 365 once the plug is pulled.

how are these 'libre' alternatives?

(libre being typically used to disambiguate free-as-in-beer vs free-as-in-freedom in the english speaking OSS world)

Krita, Inkscape & Libreoffice suite I guess ? Also Texlive for publishing.

What I’m saying is that there are alternatives for some traditional desktop apps. There are few alternatives for the big SaaS productivity apps most users use.

There are alternatives for pretty much anything these days.

No good ones when somebody suddenly pulls the plug on you, because you lose access to all your data and the network - both of which SaaS companies control in order to justify recurring payments.

The people still have some time to get their data, in this case.

Also, people need to realize they don't own data that's not stored on their HW. Cloud is at best a convenience, but I wouldn't trust it to make it so that it's the only place, where my data are stored.

You need to keep control of your data if you want choice in SW.

Nextcloud?