Apples actual response to the Flash issue

[Richmond Mathewson]

  On 01/05/2010 22:23, Randall Lee Reetz wrote:
> don't you guys get it?  Adobe is the biggest creep in techdom.  Do you remember how they screwed apple over post script?  They are the patent hogs who have stymied computational evolution for 30 years.   The only company worse then them was micromedia and adobe acquired flash by buying them outright.  Apple and microsoft aren't against flash!  They are pressuring adobe to lighten up on the use agreements.  Maybe something so core as graphics description shouldn't be proprietary?
> _______________________________________________

Nonsense: there is nothing to choose between Apple, Microsoft and Adobe;
and Macromedia wasn't any better, but for companies to survive they have
to eat smaller ones. While simple Darwinian theory may not make all that
much sense for explaining biology it seems pretty good for describing
certain aspects of corporate behaviour.

All these companies remind me of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia:
sign a treaty of 'eternal friendship' for as long as it serves your 
needs and
then turn around and kill each other's foot soldiers when the wind blows
the other way.

The ones who really fuss me are characters like Mark Shuttleworth, who
looks, on the surface, a bit too good to be true. How long is it until 
he makes
his move?

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"Maybe something so core as graphics description shouldn't be proprietary? "

Well, err, yes . . . but who did the donkey work and shouldn't they get some
sort of reward for their labours?

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"Maybe something so core as graphics description shouldn't be proprietary? "

Yup; maybe everything should be FREE and we can all run around wreathed in
garlands of pansies singing paeons of praise to the mysterious forces 
that labour
without a thought in their pretty little heads about their own needs.

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"Patent hogs" . . .  oink!

I wonder if the hard working folk who are employed by Adobe to do all
the marvellous things they have done would have done any of that work
if, by not having legal protection for the end products of their labours,
Adobe would have been unable to pay them a living wage because
every person with some sort of knowledge of programming would have
been churning out 'Fotoshop', 'Photoboutique', 'Snapshop' and so forth
based on pinched ideas.

I am a great believer in Open Source software, but I am also well aware
that in almost all cases a proprietary bit of stuff came first.

Without Photoshop we would have no GIMP,

Without Illustrator we would have no Inkscape,

Without Microsoft Office we would have no Open Office,

and so on.