ADOBE MEDIATION RESULT

[ThePixelDoc]

I agree 100% with ThePixelDoc: I absolutely don´t understand why our email adresses were given to Adobe. What else do they know now? Did they get our serial numbers too? This is absolutely not acceptable! I missed a lot of transparency during the whole thing.

Unfortunately, due to the legal action that FFH was required to do in able to even get Adobe to sit down at the table with them, they are being forced legally not to disclose the process and/or any other concessions/information they received in the negotiations.

That is other than what they have been "allowed" to tell us here of course. Fact is Adobe had all the aces, the cards, and they were the dealer. This whole attempt was rather unprecedented, when you consider how often this has happened to other popular software titles in the past. The only card to play was the "monopoly" one, and that one mostly effecting Mac users, due to there only being 2 long-time "pro" programs on that platform.

The FFH Team and we as supporters, can only look forward to another program being developed that can replace Freehand.

May I just say, these are not just dreams, and there's quite a bit of activity revolving around this solution. Once again, due to binding legalese, I personally can't give any further details.

[vaa]

This is quite unfortunate. I think the info might be of public interest. I do not understand why such a negotiation should be confidential. In any case, see here what might be the dimension of what Adobe risks, the stakes are quite high if they lose: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/punytive-damages-biggest-corporate-fines/. Please excuse me for being so insistent. Like everybody here I am quite frustrated and, like most, I do acknowledge your efforts.

[ThePixelDoc]

@vaa -- I understand your frustration, however, Adobe has done nothing illegal. However, as I have mentioned in other posts here and around the web, it definitely was a HUGE oversight on the part of the DOJ to allow Adobe to take over their main, and many would say only, competitor to Illustrator and I would include inDesign as well. ID, because Quark has never recovered from their huge mistakes in the early years of the millenium, and Freehand is used almost as much for layout purposes as it is for creating vector artwork. Just to keep this short, at one time the sale of Freehand was held up for those very same reasons.

As for the confidential negotiations: I can't say. I wasn't there. But it isn't unprecedented in these types of proceedings. This is actually very common in personal injury lawsuits, among other "one-on-one" negotiations between consumer groups and/or individuals and big companies. That's just the way it is sadly.

[NovaTech]

First of all let me thank you for all the effort you have put forth in bringing this situation along as far as you have. I know it is a very uphill battle trying to work with a big corporate entity.

As for my input, I would like to say that for production oriented individuals like myself, the 'best software' is the one that gets the job done with the fewest number of 'clicks and keystrokes.' This is where Freehand so often outshines Illustrator in many ways.

If you could simply impress upon the people at Adobe that 'every click and keystroke' counts, it would go a long way to making Illustrator a more viable alternative to Freehand. In this light, here's a 'short list' of five productivity improvements I would like to see incorporated into Illustrator:

1-Copy Special _________________________
The ability to Copy objects from within a drawing in a transportable alternative format would be a huge productivity boost for me. The way that I work is to create a number of small illustrations and icons within a single graphical document, and then to separately paste each of the individual items into other documents. In Illustrator, I have to Save each of the items in a separate document with an alternative format before transferring them. In Freehand, I simply use the 'Copy Special' feature to copy each of the items in the format that I need to place them in other documents. What a time saver!

2-Marque Selection _______________________
The 'Marque Selection' feature in Illustrator currently selects every object that the Marque merely touches in any manner. Freehand requires that an object be completely covered by the Marque in order to select it. This latter method is very advantageous when trying to select a number of small objects that are nestled within a larger object. However, Freehand also offers Illustrator's 'touch selection' method by holding down the 'Option' key while using the Marque. Having both methods available is a real productivity booster.

3- Deselecting Text Boxes __________________________
In Illustrator, to change the 'Text Cursor' back to a 'Pointer' you have to select the Pointer from the 'Toolbar.' When you are in Cursor mode, pressing the 'v-key' shortcut merely inserts a letter 'v' into the Text Box. In Freehand, all you have to do is to simply click anywhere outside of the 'Text Box' and you've got your Pointer back immediately. My God! What a tine saver!

4-Selection Display ______________________
Whenever 'Grouped Objects' in Illustrator are selected every 'Anchor Point' within the Object is displayed. This creates a highly distracting onscreen image that often obscures the details contained within the Group. A good example is Text that has been converted to Outlines. When you select the Text all you get is a big blue illegible smudge. Whereas, Freehand displays 'Grouped Objects' with a 'Bounding Box' that fully displays the all the details of the Objects contained within it.

5-A Suggestion __________________________
Given that I have little need for many of the exotic features contained in Illustrator, I would love to see the Freehand User's suggestions rolled into a 'stripped down' and simplified version of Illustrator, in the same vein as 'Photoshop Elements.' This practice is already a precedent within the Adobe Corporation, as they also have Standard and Professional versions of Acrobat and other products. I would love to see them produce 'Illustrator Elements' with the ability to read Freehand files.

I trust that this input will be of value in your negotiations with Adobe.

[drothe]

[vent]
Wow. I guess I was really naive thinking that FreeFreehand could/would get anywhere. Basically what has been accomplished is to hand over our emails & serials to Adobe, waste our time & efforts and land us a sweet discount on a big pile of sh!t that none of us wants.

Obviously I'm not a lawyer, but why on earth would this org even go into negotiations with Adobe, accepting its terms!? Let's see... Adobe discloses nothing, FreeFreehand discloses everything. Was there no hardball played at all?! It seems to me that if FreeFreehand got the generous "offer" from Adobe to sit down & discuss AI improvements, they should have declined on the spot. The primary goal should have been to free freehand , right?! I'm sorry, for me, "improving" AI is not an option because #1: it isn't possible, and #2: it's overpriced and a pig to begin with.
[/vent]

OK, so the odds of kicking Adobe's a$$ legally were slim to nill. When you have Adobe's finances, it's easy to pay for what you want and have it "legally" upheld. And, in order to temper my above vent, FreeFreehand's action was productive in that it was a necessary step. At least we now know how to move forward, and that is good.

So, as others have mentioned, Freehand is dead (at least the original). Therefore, the open source route is really the only viable option for getting decent software (& taking a chunk out of Adobe). Linux may not be hurting M$ much on the desktop, but it is making inroads on the server side (where the real $$$ is). I also believe that lighter & nimble is the future of software. This is the opposite of Adobe's bloat and charge approach - add some lame bells & whistles and charge $$$ for another upgrade cycle.

Pay-for-bloat software companies other strategy is to create "new" standards/formats in order to abandon & invalidate old ones, creating new revenue bases. Here again, Adobe is a good example with "OpenType". Supposedly, Type 1 fonts were an old, rather limited format, so we needed OpenType, right?. But, if you research this, Type 1 was (and still is) a very capable format, but abandoning it suddenly outdated everyone's font library and, voila! new market!

I'd pay to help develop an open source Freehand clone. Throwing your money into anything else would just create something that Adobe or some other corp. would eventually snap up if it ever got to be a threat. That's how M$, Adobe, & most other big software corp's "innovate".

BTW Adobe, you can stick your discount you-know-where. Oh, and that email address? It was an easily changeable alias.

[ThePixelDoc]

There were some serious problems with the further development of Freehand even when Macromedia still owned it and before the sale to Adobe.

I was reminded of that rumor by a close friend, and did a Google search:

This from 2005: http://judisohn.com/2005/08/08/macromed ... ip_freeha/

Edited to include this link:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/05/fr ... illus.html

Recently speculated upon:
That the source code was either so screwed up and/or incomplete, that there was no possible way to upgrade it, or even sell it to an interested 3rd party, even as is.

Part of that also comes from the fact that Adobe now owns the patents associated with Freehand, is (slowly!) integrating select patented features, and doesn't want to license them or give them away. Understandable in this day and age.

What I'm trying to say is that there was absolutely no possibility what-so-ever that Freehand was going to come out of the Adobe negotiations alive... because frankly, Freehand had (supposedly) already been dead for quite some time.

We're just too late to that sad info to do anything about it as members, that's all.

All is not lost. There are some extracurricular developments that the FFH members will receive info about shortly.

[FFH Mark]

I want to jump in here. Back in the January Newsletter of this year, there was an article called, "Creating a new application" and it gave news of a company creating a new vector graphics app that mimics FreeHand functions and features. (It is also repeated on our blog here: http://freefreehand.wordpress.com/) If anyone remembers, there was a Poll on the blog asking users for most needed features you wanted. http://polldaddy.com/poll/5809210/

The company is called Quasado http://www.quasado.com/en_US/home/ and they are showing early development features of this application on their site. During the lawsuit, FFH said little about this (for obvious reasons) but this is front and center to our multi-purpose strategy now. It will be a modern version of what we are very familiar with AND have the beauty of adding new features FreeHand doesn't. Plus it will import your FreeHand files. http://www.goexpressive.com/en_US/

Since last year, with the potential loss of FreeHandMX by lawsuit or coding restrictions, FFH always had a failsafe and was searching for developers who had some sense of FreeHand. Yes, it is sad that the Macromedia version of FreeHand is officially gone but a new "FreeHand" is born. More will come on this as time goes on but for now, your participation in helping the folks at Quasado will make this happen.

[Sally]

That new programme sounds promising Mark!

I just want to say that after several months + I thought I would try seeing if I can open Freehand MX again. Yipee!!! It's working and such a joy to be able to open old files and create new ones.

(Just to add too my DVDCD drive appeared kaput and I bought an external one about a year ago. Lo and behold a few days ago I discovered there is nothing wrong with the internal one!)!

[FFH Thü]

A forum folder dedicated to Expressive has been created. We welcome all your inputs to the project there!

[sina]

hello,

i was wondering if there is a thread / board that is dedicated to the suggestions of freefreehand users for the betterment of illustrator in the upcoming updates.

i've literally been writing them down ever since i started using illustrator so i would love to be able to share them before any meeting with illustrator is executed about the needs of the former freehand users.

and, of course, i am sorry if i ask the obvious; i looked for a place that is only reserved for this purpose but i couldn't see it.

thanks for all the struggle on behalf of all of us.