[LUGSB] Adobe is considering porting its Creative Suite to Linux

[Richard Yao]

At the moment, the Linux desktop seems to have a chicken and egg
problem, where bringing killer applications to the platform requires a
larger market than it has at present and obtaining a larger market
than it has at present requires killer applications be present on the
platform. What John Nack requires for Adobe to support Linux falls
into that trap and if things remain that way, nothing will likely ever
be done. I made a comment on the petition that attempts to address
that, although what will utlimately matter is whether or not someone
can sell it to Adobe:

http://www.getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/produce_creative_suite_for_linux#reply_3923178

To summarize what I said in the comment more clearly than I originally
stated it, I think that Adobe could use Linux as a vehicle to try a
development model where platform support for Windows and Mac OS X is
provided through a single API. If they like the results, they can save
money by adopting it. Since they have outsourced the bulk of the work
of supporting Linux to Nokia, they will be able to support Linux with
little commitment on their part. If they do not like the result of
their experiment, they can cut their losses by offering a Linux
edition. If the Linux edition has sufficient sales, then they will
have reason to continue it as an option for all of their customers. If
it does not, then at least they have cut their losses. If they suceed,
they could advertise as a "free" feature addition and exploit it for
PR while having their developers do less work specific to each
platform and more work specific to improving their actual software.

By the way, Dan, at present, I am oscillating between working on a
compiler assignment one weekend to working on an operating system
assignment the next weekend, with everything else being done
inbetween. While I grossly underestimated the work I had to do for
these assignments and was too busy to attend the meeting dedicated to
improving an open source project to show people that they could work
on wisotool, I still plan to do some work on wisotool myself, although
it does not look like I will have time until finals have ended.

Yours truly,
Richard Yao


On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:49 AM, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 4:00 AM, Richard Yao <ryao at ic.sunysb.edu> wrote:
>> There is a petition for Adobe to produce its Creative Suite for Linux:
>>
>> http://www.getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/produce_creative_suite_for_linux
>>
>> It seems to have gotten the attention of Carey Burgess at Adobe, who
>> says that he has forwarded it to "the appropriate team who will
>> consider it for future releases of Adobe software", which is awesome.
>>
>> By the way, everyone please vote for the petition and ask the people
>> you know to vote for it too. It looks like there is really a chance
>> that native ports of Photoshop and Dreamweaver will become available
>> for Linux.
>
> Let me chime in from afar here.  (I'm an open source developer in Los Angeles,
> and joined your list a month or so ago when there was talk of your lug having
> an open source hackfest, I thought I could help with that.)
>
> Back when I was nudging Wine as hard as I could to support Photoshop,
> I exchanged a few emails with the Adobe guy who heads Photoshop,
> John Nack.  His attitude towards a Linux port can be seen in this blog
> post:
> http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/02/wine_offers_improved_photoshop_on_linux_su.html
> in which he says (in a comment to a comment, scroll down a bit):
> "The question is, and always has been, whether Adobe could achieve
> meaningful revenue growth by offering a third version of Photoshop.
> Would porting to Linux bring in tens of thousands of new users (those
> who aren't already using PS on Mac or Windows), or would it simply
> shift part of the existing user base to a different OS? "
>
> So, in his view, it's easy to tell when it's time to do a Linux port: when
> there are tens of thousands of people using Linux already who
> do not currently own Photoshop but would buy a copy if and only
> if it were available on Linux.
>
> In other words, they'd need to see about fifty thousand signatures on
> that petition before they would really take notice.
> - Dan
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