ADOBE MEDIATION RESULT

[art101]

Every time I think about this hideous outcome, my blood pressure ratchets up a notch or two.

Adobe's corporate monopoly is complete. ALL HAIL ADOBE! FreeHand is dead. The FTC's stipulations regarding Adobe's buyout of Macromedia are nothing more than a silly, sad, pointless joke.

Whatever.

"Free FreeHand Corp. v. Adobe Systems Inc., No. 11-CV-02174-LHK (Feb. 10, 2012) (Koh, J.). Judge Koh refused to dismiss the bulk of an antitrust complaint Against Adobe Systems relating to its acquisition of FreeHand, a professional vector graphic illustration software. Although Adobe signed an FTC consent order in 1994 requiring it to divest itself of FreeHand after it acquired Aldus, that provision expired in 2005, whereupon Adobe acquired FreeHand by purchasing Macromedia. The plaintiffs alleged a “monopoly broth” of post-merger anti-competitive conduct, including (1) alleged charging of monopoly prices, (2) discontinuing support for and development of FreeHand, (3) bundling of Adobe’s Illustrator product with other Adobe products, and (4) declining to release FreeHand’s source code to the open source community. Although the court determined that declining to release the source code could not be considered as part of the overall effect of Adobe’s alleged anticompetitive conduct, it allowed the other allegations to stand."

Whatever.

I repeat: F*CK ADOBE.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

[art101]

[FFH Thü]

Yes, we understand the angry feelings about these results. But lets be frank here: What do you all think how far we could have gone with 8000$ against a multi billion corporation?

I am sad I have to say this folks, but we have had over 6000 members and all we got to the cause was 8000$. Of course there were some who gave a fair amount and I want to thank them very much. But the other 98% of our members have failed. So it is very surprising we got even that far. Of course it did cost our team only hundreds of hours of work to do all the communication, the web apps, tech, the lawsuit prep, the events, meetings etc. and all without payment.

The result? We can honestly say, we have tried the best under that circumstances.
Can you?

Like your epigraph says: We have to draw the line here. Now we can go on and concentrate on the other options.

[slopes]

I'd like to say thanks to the FreeFreeHand team for pursuing this. I did feel chasing Adobe was a bit of a hopeless cause, but didn't really want to be negative about it whilst the action was being taken. The new Expressive project is a direction I have always felt would offer the most successful outcome. It's very exciting - and thanks to the team again for organising it.

[magirus]

First of all, THANK YOU, for all your hard work, i keep hope alive while you're fighting.

Unfortunatelly, Adobe will never accept the superior advantages of FreeHand, and will keep developing biger versions of Illustrator, with almost no change between them (except of course the price) and still not understanding the
illogical way their cursors work, selecting all under his way... (and what about the SIZE of AI files??? please!)

Well, I believe like you, we must now focus in the new hope, "Stagestack". Unfortunately, Ican'tmeka donations actually, but I will do my besto to do so, in the meantime, I give you my hands.

Too sad for all, and most of all, for the lot of new generations who really believe that AI is the best... until I show them that I can do the same job in less than half the time... (or simply, I can Zoom in, REALLY IN, he he he)

Thanks again.

[HMU-56]

Dear FreeFreehand board and Members,
Although I am too grateful for all the efforts taken to indeed free Freehand from the hands of incredible powerful Adobe... It truly is like a real disaster for my job as livery design engineer with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to not be longer capable in the near future to use (an updated) version of FreeHand for my work. You see FreeHand is the ONLY tool that can be used to make the very precise and more sophisticated paint/spray masks that are used for aircraft decoration, such as gradient masks. I tried to do it with Illustrator once, but the precission and tools needed are not present in Illustrator.
More sad is it that the New Illustrator CS6 does not even import FreeHand files anymore... So why didn't you made sure that even if we are doomed to use Illustrator, that a possible transition could eventually be made by being able to import the FreeHand format files? What good does us a lousy "discount" if we even can continue building upon our many files and library. When I have to create all from the ground up, with a tool that is hardly capable of doing what it ought to do, it will be far to expensive to create what I have to create and it will not be feasible anymore...
FreeHand Forum/Quasado have to come with this new vector program "Stagestack/Expression" as fast as possible an make it that it will work as FreeHand, with possibilities to import FreeHand files!

I am very very sad that the outcome of the whole legal battle has such meager result... I want, no, I NEED FREEHAND or a software package that can do the same, with the same intuitive interface, not the crap of Adobe Illustrator!
BR, Hans

[FFH Thü]

[Drwart]

I am wondering if Adobe you will sue based on the app similarity to Freehand?

[Dave Mole]

Greetings to all..
Just like to take this opportunity to thank all involved in the FreeFreehand movement for their time, effort and passion, I, like every other FreeHand user feel gutted by the death of the best vector application on the planet.

[Edli_99]

Howdy folks,
I am new to the forum and have just been looking at all of the responses to the decision and the wonderful "discount offer" Adobe made. I, too, was more than disappointed at the outcome, but, in all reality, I did not expect even what was given by Adobe. You actually got a discount offer and some consultation meetings. Not that I expect anything to come from it.

I have had and witnessed too many dealings with "the law" to think that there was a snowball's chance that the project would work out in Freehand user's favor. The laws are stacked against that sort of thing. And now Adobe rules the roost and can ignore anything it want's.

The discount offer does me no good as my employer had already sprung for CS5. Adobe has been bombarding me with offers to upgrade to CS6 (and soon CS7) ever since. But the price on the upgrade is gross, so that won't happen. I can't afford the discount offer personally, so that won't happen. And my experience so far with Illustrator is about like me trying to read Russian with no translator dictionary. I am sure that would improve with time, but it is a task that I really do not look forward to.

So I will, most likely spend most of my time on the forum looking at other similar applications and following the Quasados project. If I spend too much time discussing this area of the situation I think I will become more and more hostile. So it is better to make plans to keep my old machines working and looking for an alternative to Illustrator

I would like to thank the FreeFreeHand group for their work on the whole project. It may have been a long and frustrating fight, but it was a good one. And even if the results were not an open source Freehand or better, you may have done a real benefit to the project and Freehand users by bring many us together and providing a focal point. If this forum, and the ties that are formed here, can grow maybe it can create a space to develop something different from what Big Daddy Adobe has planned for us.

In the meantime, Freehand still works - if a little flakey at times - and I will still use it.

Later -