In the name of 'cross-platform uniformity', Adobe has been tossing aside Mac interface standards and usability. And now, doing stupid things like including their Silverlight-competitor (whatever it's name is) with Adobe Reader, just to boost it's installed base, is just another black mark on Adobe's name.

If they want to fight MS, they could try making a first class app for MacOS X. And not have such a complicated registration/authorization setup that only seems to bother legitimate users.

Seriously who cares what that idiot Dvorak thinks? Please ignore him.

Can't spell Dvorak without.... D O R K

The issue that Dvorak and others don't understand is that Linux is inseparable from open source and the concept of so-called free software. Since Adobe products are neither, I don't see even Adobe helping to raise market share significantly. Sure, Linux will get a huge influx of new users--at first, but I don't see it having any long-term effect. I just don't see it. Let me put it this way, take away those foundations, and you don't have Linux--for better or for worse, that's how it is.

I think that John is onto something with his line of reasoning, but again, I doubt it would happen. On the other hand, were Adobe to open-source the flash source code, then we might see some headway against Silverlight ever gaining a foothold--but again, not likely.

Lots of stuff mixed here.
In competition about delivery formats (flash vs. SL) it doesn't matter what software the content was made with (pPro vs. fcp).
Every content making software could output using open standard formats and still compete with other software vendors.
Also it is unimportant what linux's market share is before it has any major content making software. Right question would be how many times Mac's market share linux would have after CS is released to it?

"camp site"

Why would Apple want to do anything to stop Silverlight? They have no horse in the Flash/Silverlight fight since Silverlight works fine on Macs.

It would be unseemly for the Apple, who controls the Mac platform, to pick winners and losers on said platform. They already did it by locking in Google as the only search engine in Mac OS X's bundled browser, Safari, but to now try to defeat Flash competitors on the Mac platform goes a bit too far. And how does it help consumers to have companies collude with each other to stomp out competition (i.e. Apple and Adobe colluding to stop Flash competitors)? Doesn't help consumers, and doesn't help Apple.

The problem with Adobe "doing their own" Linux distro and running the CS apps on it is this: Linux users don't like to pay for software. Plain and simple. They like their open source, free as in speech software that they can poke and prod, and alter the code if necessary. Adobe is not in the business of releasing their source code for their golden goose apps - Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc. So I don't see this as a viable business strategy, at least under the current conditions.

Microsoft is pushing Silverlight hard, but I don't see it going anywhere. The authoring tools are PC only. The plugin isn't getting any serious traction, Olympics aside. Flash is near ubiquitous. Silverlight is not. That might change, but for now, Adobe doesn't have to worry about MS that much.

Surely you mean camp SITE ?

If you look at what Adobe are doing with Flash/AIR (particularly the new language for graphics plug-ins and C++ support in Flash 10), along with their announced intention of a 10-year move towards web-delivered applications, they are evidently working to make themselves platform independent.

Where Dvorak may be missing the point is that supporting and shipping a Linux distribution is a non-trivial business. I strongly suspect that Microsoft could, if it chose to, actually undercut any commercial Linux, simply because it has the volume and scale to do so.

I'm unsure it what was opening the Flash source would help stop Silverlight - it is, after all, available on all 3 platforms already, and Silverlight's success, so far, has been through deals MS have done with broadcasters. That is the mistake people made in the past - thinking it is 'may the best technology win'. MS win by going in over the heads of technologists.

I am tired of persons coming online and offering nothing more than just some derogatory quip about a writer with whose opinions they do not agree. It smacks of a lack of intelligence, quite frankly, and should be discouraged. That Guest who made the D O R K comment, should be an unwelcome guest, even a trespasser. Set the dogs on him.

Dvorak was intelligent enough to render an opinion, fairly informed, i might add, on the subject at hand. Why not counter with an equally intelligent argument? I don't yet see anything in the Guest's comments that would convince me to consider Dvorak's comments or Dvorak himself, as dorkish.

Please Guest, explain your thoughts...if you have any on the subject...or do you then consider me also a DORK?

OK you can run opensource apps on OSX, why the hell you can not run proprietary software on Linux? Yes the free users will not buy/use Adobe Suite (for them it is abomination), but there a lot of profs who would use Photoshop/Flash/Indesign/Premiere/etc on Linux. You have a strong/stable OS with natively ported apps this would MS not like... and something more there is a lot bigger problem to make a good crack for Linux as for Windows.... I think it is not that bad Idea....

That's the problem. Adobe and Apple and MS won't share source code with each other, that's why performance gains have and will always be slow. It's preposterous that app developers don't have access to the entire code chain, but that's the closed source way. Adobe has been ported to Mac forever and performance is the same as on MS. I think that Dvoraks' point is that app performance could shoot through the roof if the same programmers could manipulate both the OS as well as the app. True multi-processor support and programming graphics cards to do image processing etc have gone almost nowhere, and a big part of the reason is closed source.

If Adobe made a move on Linux, absolutely everything would be under their control. Think of an app that runs 2 or 4 or 8 times as fast or more. THAT would be a way to shoot the bear.

This closed source nature of so much of the software world is holding us back so badly and no one really wants to admit it. We are basically driving Ferraris in parking lots.