[Re: Adobe's recent unethical actions]

[Matt Graham]

Mike Szumlinski <szumlins@pilot.msu.edu> wrote:

> On 7/18/01 3:34 PM, "Ben Pfaff" <pfaffben@msu.edu> wrote:
> 
> > Mrs. McHale and Mr. Prescott:
> > 
> > I have read in various places that Adobe has had Mr. Dmitri
> > Sklyarov arrested for the "crime" of demonstrating that some of
> > Adobe's encryption products do not provide good security.  This
> > is an unethical and ultimately unacceptable way for a corporatino
> > to behave.[snippage]

> No offense dude, but doing press work with anything but photoshop and
> InDesign are just silly. Yes...silly.

No offense, dude, but doing what Adobe did is just silly.  Yes... silly, and
they should be smacked hard for it.

Maybe they will come around, maybe not, but wringing your hands and saying
"But we have no choice, we *must* use Adobe's products!" will allow Adobe to
continue laughing all the way to the bank.  Maybe you can't convince your
co-workers/bosses to stop using Adobe stuff.  Maybe you don't want to stop
using Adobe products.  But, if you so desire, you can write to the company and
*make your displeasure known*.  Boycotting Adobe's products would be most
effective, of course, but even the thickest companies listen when herds of
their customers, their potential customers, and random people all start
complaining.

If you agree with what Adobe has done, fine.  If you don't want to bother
complaining, fine.  Just be honest about what you're doing, and why.

Personally, I can't do much.  I've never bought an Adobe product, and the only
one I have used in the last 1.5 years is Acrobat Reader, which is getting rpm
-e'd from my personal machines.  I work at a place which does prepress work,
the production people are neck-deep in Photoshop half the time, and there's no
way they'll be able to switch--but I will be telling them about this assuming
they don't already know.  (No need to do this on the development side; the
programmers already have reasons to hate Adobe...)


-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
"I backed up my brain to tape, but tar says the tape contains no data...."