Would you agree with the following statement about Adobe?

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(a post by FFH Bez, from our previous Q&A forum)

“Adobe's strategy has always been to remove competition as much as possible in each category of the software toolsets they currently market.”

I'm writing an article (a very special new project we'll be sharing later on) and this assertion is begging to be made. However I don't want to put this statement in without good substantiation.

We're all familiar with Adobe's path to market domination: purchasing Aldus and Macromedia, killing off the perceived weaker product where they see overlap. But what specifically can be pointed to as supporting the above statement? Have they demonstrated any tactics where, through a restricted file type or other aggressive behavior, they were able to edge out their closest competitor in a given category?

Examples, please. This could be very useful to our cause. And, thanks in advance.

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(answer by Peter Schmitz)

Hi, as a graphic-designer i´m working with Freehand since 1988. I loved the constant development in implementing features creative people like me, really needed, without overfeaturing the programm. Maybe Illustrator is fine for people working in the industry, but it never reached simplcity and intuitivity that Freehand has since Freehand 5.0. I wonder why the US-Goverment does not react on Adobe buying a compatetor and than letting it die. Microsoft would not come away with this.

Sorry my english is not that good. I hope you get the idea. Keep the good work up. Freehand must live.

Peter

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(answer by Freehander)

Throughout my history of using Freehand, i've noticed Adobe has always snubbed direct import into illustrator. Freehand, on the other hand, has always provided numerous ways to export or save files out of the native freehand format. For example, since its earlier versions, Freehand could export in numerous .ai formats and even .pdf, whereas Illustrator never offered a direct FH import for any version.

The macromedia suite provided great interoperability between Fireworks, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Freehand in MX. That was the pinnacle of object linking and imbedding, where a user could copy directly from Freehand and have the vectors be editable in Fireworks or Flash. I did this often when I'd start a website design in Freehand and want to extend some of the functionality. It worked really well. Once adobe purchased macromedia, many of these features were broken and/or poorly supported in the newer CS releases. What we've seen happen is a systematic extermination of Freehand over time. I believe the statement above because i have seen/experienced it first hand.

BTW, I'm proud to say my icon/logo/identity was created in Freehand!

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