Adobe CEO on Open Source

Reeses writes "ZDNet has an interview with John Warnock, CEO of Adobe, and has his impressions of Open Source software, and what Adobe plans on doing with it. " Assorted childish jabs at Quark, the laughable proposition that they really should be in the portal business, and assorted comments on the Open Source movement. All in all, a very amusing piece worth a read- it gets better half way in.

Comments

Why Adobe should OS PostScript; a memetic view

[acb]

If Adobe want to join the open source movement, the obvious places to start would be infrastructure code; technologies, languages, libraries. And the obvious first target in Adobe's case would be PostScript, or parts thereof.

Think about it; if they released a basic Display PostScript implementation (or the code necessary to immediately integrate Ghostscript into XFree86), X users on Linux (and the BSDs) would immediately have access to Display PostScript. The DPS imaging model, being free, would become part of the environment, whose existence could be assumed by any developer. This would ensure the success of Adobe's model of imaging on X, and if Adobe did it first, there'd be less incentive for OSS developers to get involved in rival companies' models.

And if an (open-source) PostScript-based system becomes the de facto standard, that would give Adobe an advantage in porting their applications, which presumably share the same philosophy more closely.

If a general-purpose PostScript library (or set of libraries, for the imaging model, the language, and so forth) were released, perhaps under a similar licence to Netscape's JavaScript, it would definitely find a home in many projects.

Adobe would stand to lose very little; PostScript itself is a fairly old technology, and while coding an implementation is laborious (due to its size), it is not exactly secret-weapon material.

The standards game is not about intellectual property, but about memes; about getting your memes into the ideosphere, and helping them spread as far and wide as possible. Open-source technologies make far more fecund memes than equivalent proprietary, or semi-proprietary, ones; distibutable, usable code helps them spread like wildfire. And an open-source PostScript kit would make PostScript a killer meme, and quite probably the standard in its fields. Which would be good news for PostScript and good news for Adobe's related technologies.

This is not what Open Source is for.

[nevets]

I'm sorry, but I'm tired of hearing about Corporate Execs saying we will go open source and everything will be better.

Open Source is a community. You don't just say "here, go do this" and everyone jumps up and does your work. Its been mentioned before, that programmers like to program on things they enjoy. If Adobe opens its source for the benefit of others and not just for themselves then you might get help.

Open Source works best when you both produce the code and the support. Others will send you bugs (and maybe if you're lucky at patch as well) so you product becomes better quality. And as the prime resource for the product, you will also be the prime supporter companies will choose. Thus, making Open Source a money maker. You can also market your product as something that will ALWAYS be supported because it IS open.

Warnock looks like he's trying to pillage the Open Source community. I always welcome Companies into this community, but at least for the right reasons. I know they are out to make money, but they must give back as well.