RE: Why should I be worried about the merger? What if?

["Spitzer, Judd L" <judd -dot- l -dot- spitzer -at- lmco -dot- com>]

What if you had only one choice?  In many situations with software, that
turns out to be true.  There is only One solution for professional
editing of PDF files, and that's Acrobat.

There is only One solution for professional design of Flash based
files/apps, and that's Flash.

But what if everything was that way?  Only one audio format, one photo
format, one wordprocessing format, etc...  And what if you had to pay a
royalty to be able to access all the files on your computer, sort of a
digital rights management protection on files that you create?  And
everytime you use their software, it contacted the company that
purchased it from to let them know, what, where and how long you used
there program?

...and you can't or won't change to something else because you are so
overly invested in now has control.  

Maybe it sounds like doom and gloom and 1984, but why does my Go Live
product always "check-in" with Adobe on startup?  Why does Microsoft
have such a restrictive and registration process?  Why are many
different music files filled with DRM that requires a log in to another
computer system in order to listen to them?

I don't think I'm the only one to think that this could happen.  If the
business model changes, and we pay for use, rather than an unlimited
license for a version, under the guise of thwarting piracy, then I would
be very concerned.

Of course, why should I be concerned?  I write using XML... I don't need
any of that stuff!
-Judd

-----Original Message-----
As I've mentioned previously, I think Dreamweaver and FreeHand are
better apps than those Adobe already has--and it's not likely that
they'll survive the merger. Therefore the alternatives will be less
capable tools *from my point of view!* Obviously your opinion of Adobe's
apps may be different depending on how expert you are in those tools.

--Chris

Bill Swallow wrote:
> Why are we all assuming that we'd have to settle for a poorer set of 
> tools?

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