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Adobe Forming a Linux Strategy?

Posted by timothy on from the bet-hedging dept.

rocketjam writes "According to cnet, Adobe Systems, the 800-pound gorilla of commercial graphics software is looking to become more involved with desktop Linux. The company has recently posted two new jobs, one for a director of Linux market development to 'identify and evaluate strategies for Adobe in the Linux and open-source desktop market', and one for a senior computer scientist who will 'become maintainer and/or architect for one or more Adobe-sponsored open-source projects.' Additionally, Adobe has joined the Open Source Development Labs and is active in the desktop Linux working group. A company spokesman said they are not currently looking to port any of their flagship products such as Photoshop to Linux yet, as they currently don't see sufficient numbers in the platform to make a good business case for it."

5 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. This is great news by Robert+M.+Wales · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hopefully, Photoshop and Illustrator will be ported. If they are, Linux can count me in as one of their users. My Adobe applications are the only reason I still use Windows.

  2. They don't think we've forgotten . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    . . . about Sklyarov, do they? They can port Photoshop to Linux; I'll stick with the GIMP, thank you very much.

  3. Re:Dont need photoshop by Chicane-UK · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry but like the Open Office vs Microsoft Office debate.. for free products they are astoundingly good, and given the choice between not using office and graphics tools and using OO / GIMP then i'd use the free software in a second.

    But if price were no issue, the commercial applications would rule the roost! THATS a no brainer... IMHO of course.

    --
    "Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
  4. Desktop Software ISN'T What They're Interested In. by VE3ECM · · Score: 4, Interesting
    What a lot of people don't realize is that a big big BIG chunk of Adobe's market ISN'T commercial desktop software... it's e-paper solutions, workflow management, document management solutions... lots of back end stuff.

    It's obvious why Adobe is now thinking about building some leverage here:
    With Linux making considerable inroads in the server market, Adobe needs to ensure their backend products are still going to be available.

    Of course, tying in with that is Adobe's total dominance of PDF as a standard and their stranglehold on fonts... If Adobe can get a toehold in how things like PDFs and fonts are displayed on the Linux desktop, they can push out the little Linux PDF players and retain dominance.

    From there, if Adobe makes some serious impact, THEN we'll probably see desktop apps starting to port to Linux.

    If you see Acrobat as a Linux app, that's your first step.

  5. Re:Arg matey by rocketjam · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Most people using Photoshop professionally have a large amount of time invested in learning and mastering the program. These people aren't going to casually switch to another image editor because of price or a handful of cool features. There have been some very good commercial competitors to Photoshop over the years including the highly regarded LivePicture, but none of them has threatened Photoshop's dominance. Adobe now markets heavily to the consumer end of this market with Photoshop Elements which still contains most of the Photoshop features a casual user might need and this ultimately reinforces Photoshop's market-leading position.