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

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

>No, there's Acrobat, Infix PDF Editor, Cadkas PDF Editor, Jaws PDF
Editor, Foxit PDF Editor, SCP 
>PDF Editor, eXPert PDF Editor, and a slew of others. "Professional" is
subjective, because many 
>professionals buy Acrobat and only use it to Save As PDF or Distill a
print file to PDF.

I'll agree with you that there are plenty of other editing tools for PDF
out there, however, none have even close to the market share that Adobe
Acrobat has.  And for what it is worth, Adobe continues to develop and
produce newer "versions" of the PDF standard which don't always work
properly with older versions of PDF.  So PDF in-and-of-itself is a
strange file format that CAN act peculiar if you don't use the version
of software that created it.

>Macromedia opened up the SWF format a couple of years ago. Depending on
what you need to do, there >are plenty of tools out there that will
allow you to get your job done.

I've exported some files using a program that created SWF format, only
to get a 3Meg file.  After bringing it into Flash Professional, is was
able to optimize the file by well over 70%.  I'm not sure that anyone
has really come out with a strong Flash Compatible Flash alternative
yet.

>Are you saying that the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe will whittle
the tools down to one 
>option? That's a very sad and negative view. I see it as opening the
doors for competition and 
>innovation.

I'm saying that software companies in general are in business to make
money.  So depending on their business plan, they either serve the
shareholder first, or the customer first.  We would like to believe it
is the customer that is number one, but we all know that is not always
the case.  Software sometimes ships with bugs and some companies may not
fix the problem if it would cost them too much money and cause a recall
of product.  They look at the bottom line.

>But why allow yourself that confinement in the first place? If you see
a dead end when driving, do 
>you go all the way to the end, stop, and then complain or do you stay
your course while looking 
>for alternate routes, or perhaps turn around entirely?

I believe that Open Standards tend to lend themselves to the best minds
and best technology without the oligarchy of a business.  XML basically
lets you write your own markup language. Just as XHTML and HTML are
considered subsets of XML.

>It's called validation, synchronization, live updates, and
security/copy protection. All these 
>machanisms are in place to protect the vendor's sale of their
technology, prohibit widespread 
>piracy, and keep you up to date with patches.

I'm ok with doing it for the initial set up.  You put in a serial number
that you paid for, and you set up your copy.  If another copy tries to
be registered with that serial number, it would obviously fail.  We give
up privacy by blindly acknowledging software license agreements all the
time.  Most of us aren't lawyers.  But we know the basics, don't steal,
and you can make a backup copy in case your original is destroyed.

>Why? I'm a MSDN subscriber and I think it's wonderful! I pay a monthly
fee for my Universal 
>subscription and I have access to pretty much any MS technology I
want... Office apps, SDKs, IDEs,
>sneak peeks of Longhorn before the pblic sneak peeks, and a ton of
other technologies. The only 
>things that aren't covered seem to be Microsoft Games and other
completely non-business MS apps.

MSDN is one way, and that's a development program, not COTS software
that may be in place for 10 or 20 years.  Of course you could pay much
less to develop for flavors of Linux, Unix, Solaris or Mac OS X.  If you
want to develop on a Microsoft Platform, MSDN is the ONLY way and YOU
WILL PAY Microsoft.  To be fair, hopefully you can make good ROI and it
will pay off.  

There are different schools of thought concerning the how the electronic
frontier conducts business.  There is a threshold of pain that most
people's purse strings can endure.  The idea of adding an additional
monthly payment plan can hardly thrill anyone, unless you can write it
off your taxes.

To get back to the original topic, should I be worried about the merger?
I don't think that if you are watching the marketplace and technology
spheres to see what happens next.  Be proactive not reactive (if you
can).  Develop transition plans and strategies just in case that company
is no longer available in the future.

I think that both companies have been great (Adobe and Macromedia),
providing many of the top notch applications I use everyday.  I look
forward to seeing results of the synergy that the creative labs of these
companies offer us in the upcoming years.

Just as someone had mentioned in this thread, "Who moved my cheese?"
Even when you find the greatest cheese, you just better keep an eye out
for more! :-D

-Judd


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