Comments on: Adobe’s Donation of the ActionScript Virtual Machine to Mozilla http://www.annezelenka.com/2006/11/adobes-donation-of-the-actionscript-virtual-machine-to-mozilla a blog about the connected age Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:19:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Anne http://www.annezelenka.com/2006/11/adobes-donation-of-the-actionscript-virtual-machine-to-mozilla#comment-649 Anne Sun, 26 Nov 2006 21:30:58 +0000 http://www.annezelenka.com/testbed/2006/11/adobes-donation-of-the-actionscript-virtual-machine-to-mozilla#comment-649 Hi Duane, thanks for stopping by! Adobe appears to be doing a great job of walking the balance beam between open source and proprietary models--what an exciting time to be there. Of course you have to keep your shareholders in mind, one difficult thing as you know is satisfying them in the short run while still positioning for long term opportunities and challenges. That sounds like a great paper on commoditization. I will keep an eye out for it. I read your blog too and I can't wait to hear more about what you guys are doing. Since I've been writing about Adobe products I've heard from many passionate Flash developers; it's great to feel the energy of such a devoted community. Hi Duane, thanks for stopping by! Adobe appears to be doing a great job of walking the balance beam between open source and proprietary models–what an exciting time to be there.

Of course you have to keep your shareholders in mind, one difficult thing as you know is satisfying them in the short run while still positioning for long term opportunities and challenges.

That sounds like a great paper on commoditization. I will keep an eye out for it.

I read your blog too and I can’t wait to hear more about what you guys are doing. Since I’ve been writing about Adobe products I’ve heard from many passionate Flash developers; it’s great to feel the energy of such a devoted community.

]]> By: Duane Nickull http://www.annezelenka.com/2006/11/adobes-donation-of-the-actionscript-virtual-machine-to-mozilla#comment-648 Duane Nickull Fri, 24 Nov 2006 22:30:39 +0000 http://www.annezelenka.com/testbed/2006/11/adobes-donation-of-the-actionscript-virtual-machine-to-mozilla#comment-648 Anne: I couldn't agree more with your assessment that this move is great for developers. Within Adobe, there are a vast number of people who love open source and standards. In the last year, Adobe has released many free or open source projects either directly or indirectly. RIAForge.org is going strong in its' first two months, the new XMP SDK toolkit is popular with the "C" crowd and XPAAJ has resulted in great ways for Java Developers to manipulate PDF documents. http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp/ http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/downloads/xpaaj.html http://www.riaforge.org Also check out this - http://opensource.adobe.com/ The concept of nothing lasting forever was summarized really well in an article entitled "Walking the Stack" which I cannot find any more given the term also has connotations in programming and search results are buried. The idea is that over time, most technology becomes a commodity and companies keep having to innovate to add new value. The PDF standard is a great case study in this. PDF could have easily just slipped into the stack as TCP/IP, XML, HTTP and other technologies have but it kept evolving due to the hunger of the users for more functionality and the response by Adobe and the community. I also find open sourcing existing product is much harder for larger incumbent companies to rationalize. Usually, Open sourcing a product or library is done by a smaller company as a strategy to get an initial buy in. When a company is public and has shareholders who expect a return on their investment into the shares, they are more reluctant to allow a company to open source a product or donate code to an open source organization. In our case, we have a state of the art CEO who understands the values of open source and is someone I am personally proud of for making the decisions to let us open source stuff. Bruce is one of, if not the best CEO in the industry IMO. The upper management also listen to developers who make recommendations about putting technologies into standards bodies or open source where it makes sense but collectively we still have a responsibility to our shareholders (of which I am one too ;-) The key to the strategy is balance - let the open source community get access to stuff to help with maintenance, innovation and adoption while still keeping a business model that benefits the community and the shareholders. Once more, I am glad you like the direction and I want to thank you for getting the word out too. People need to know Adobe is about much more than Photoshop, Flash and PDF. Cheers! PS - I now read your blog almost daily ;-) Duane Anne:

I couldn’t agree more with your assessment that this move is great for developers. Within Adobe, there are a vast number of people who love open source and standards. In the last year, Adobe has released many free or open source projects either directly or indirectly. RIAForge.org is going strong in its’ first two months, the new XMP SDK toolkit is popular with the “C” crowd and XPAAJ has resulted in great ways for Java Developers to manipulate PDF documents.

http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/downloads/xpaaj.html
http://www.riaforge.org

Also check out this - http://opensource.adobe.com/

The concept of nothing lasting forever was summarized really well in an article entitled “Walking the Stack” which I cannot find any more given the term also has connotations in programming and search results are buried. The idea is that over time, most technology becomes a commodity and companies keep having to innovate to add new value. The PDF standard is a great case study in this. PDF could have easily just slipped into the stack as TCP/IP, XML, HTTP and other technologies have but it kept evolving due to the hunger of the users for more functionality and the response by Adobe and the community.

I also find open sourcing existing product is much harder for larger incumbent companies to rationalize. Usually, Open sourcing a product or library is done by a smaller company as a strategy to get an initial buy in. When a company is public and has shareholders who expect a return on their investment into the shares, they are more reluctant to allow a company to open source a product or donate code to an open source organization. In our case, we have a state of the art CEO who understands the values of open source and is someone I am personally proud of for making the decisions to let us open source stuff. Bruce is one of, if not the best CEO in the industry IMO. The upper management also listen to developers who make recommendations about putting technologies into standards bodies or open source where it makes sense but collectively we still have a responsibility to our shareholders (of which I am one too ;-)
The key to the strategy is balance - let the open source community get access to stuff to help with maintenance, innovation and adoption while still keeping a business model that benefits the community and the shareholders.

Once more, I am glad you like the direction and I want to thank you for getting the word out too. People need to know Adobe is about much more than Photoshop, Flash and PDF. Cheers!

PS - I now read your blog almost daily ;-)
Duane

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