Mike Chambers on Macromedia-Adobe Deal

Here is the real scary part of the proposed merger. People from Macromedia and Adobe may/will lose their job. Usually when mergers like this happen, it eliminates competition, but also in doing so, it eleminates the need for a department or in this case serveral departments. Look at the recent Oracle/PeopleSoft aquisition. Oracle bought PeopleSoft and then said well all you folks who put in your blood, sweat, and tears into this company, here's a nice severance package, it's been nice knowing ya. I have no doubt that Macromedia product lines will do okay, it's the people who drive the engine is what I worry about.

Reminds me of a Roy Orbison song... "yes, now you're gone, and from this moment on, I've been cryyyyyyyying, over you..." Seriously this can't be good. I'd be surprised if it goes through governmen regulation, there's a lot of monopoly potential here.

Phill, yes, MAX is going on as planned.

Ben, I don't want to speculate on what may or may not happen with this merger... Also, I understand that Macromedia employees are not going to talk about it(which is a good thing since this may cause mixed messages..). My only question is, and I understand that this is too early to know but would appreciate a post eventually, will MAX2005 still go on as planned? Some of us need to make sure we have it on the budget (specially east coasters..) and any info would be appreciated... Thanks and Cheers.....

This HAS to be good for CF developers. Reason being, bar the terribly likeable Ben Forta, CF has suffered from very poor marketing ENGINE in recent years. CF developers are laughed at for still honouring the platform, including this author. Adobe can only do things better. I remember Ben saying once that CF is the easiest to learn and thus the obvioius platform. But not at this price. Every support call at $400+ is outrageous. And there's SO little traffic at the CF forum on the MM site, it's hardly worth it! As a BETA for 7, we JUST bought into 7 "properly". I just hope we made the right decision to spend hundreds of hours learning its idiosyncracies. Time will tell, and when you have 3 million lines of source code in CF, it's not the easiet rewrite! But nor do Adobe care? Time will tell ...

I think Adobe is buying Macromedia for the same reason why Macromedia bought Allaire few years back. I hope Adobe supports Macrobat CF Macrobat Flash Macrobat Flex PKK

I think Adobe is buying Macromedia for the same reason why Macromedia bought Allaire few years back. I hope Adobe supports Macrobat CF Macrobat Flash Macrobat Flex PKK

I think Adobe is buying Macromedia for the same reason why Macromedia bought Allaire few years back. I hope Adobe supports Macrobat CF Macrobat Flash Macrobat Flex PKK

Anyone read this of the Infoworld article at http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/04/18/HNadobemacromedia_1.html carefully where it says: "The Macromedia name will live on as a software brand, but if the deal goes ahead the merged company will be called Adobe Systems......"

The "new" MX suite: Dreamweaver,Flash,Illustrator, Photoshop... yes Adobe understands that, but do they understand ColdFusion? It would not be the first time a company had bought another, but did not understand the products they bought. Adobe are into design but are they really into Applications.

Oh no.... Adobe = the debil If they can make a flash based pdf reader then I am all for the merger.

> As long as Adobe stays commited to CF.. And Flash/AS2/OpenSWF... :-)

The "new" MX suite: ColdFusion, Dreamweaver,Flash,Illustrator, Photoshop... Sounds good to me. I had no problems with Freehand and Fireworks, but lets face it, most design shops use adobe software, and opening a psd with Fireworks never worked 100%... As long as Adobe stays commited to CF, and never ever again try to sell "GoDead", I'm ok with this!

Adobe is a very strong, stable company. They also seem to have a very good marketing department/channel, which would be a good thing for the MM apps. I think it's interesting to see all the comments flying around that certain MM products will be dying/discontinued. This is day 1 of the announcement people! Besides, has anyone stopped to think that it's not a matter of Adobe wanting to kill its MM competition, but that it is realizing a new vision for their company?! There could be some AMAZING products that come from this merger. Can't wait to see...

poo on macrodobe.

This morning's news leave me somewhat nervous. On one hand I think it's probably a good thing for Flash that the company that backs it is large (to ward off Microsoft's potential competition). And better synergy between Photoshop and Flash studio is also a welcome thing. But what will happen to Illustrator/Freehand (I prefer Freehand), or Acrobat/FlashPaper (well, Acrobat ain't going anywhere.. so the question is, will they keep FlashPaper which I think is a very cool thing), or GoLive/Dreamweaver (if they have any sense Dreamweaver will be kept, GoLive dropped if one has to go). And how about Fireworks. Time will tell. At least this is interesting :-).

Dave- You do know you can disable many of the plugins in the free Adobe Reader that makes it load much faster, right? I considered it a necessity! steve

Joao wrote: "This is Macromedia's death. Money buys everything, even beautiful things" Er, yes. Macromedia is a business, operating in the world of business and is subject to business rules and activity. However cool it's products and 'zeitgeist', it's still a business and not a work of art! There's no need to run to the mountains and join the resistance, you'll only bring down the system that made Macromedia and Adobe (and the businesses that consume their beautiful products) possible in the first place.

I don't like PDF's because they load so slow, I like the Flash Paper idea - so what is going to happen to Flash Paper?

I hope Macromedia products (or whatever Macrobat new products are) don't become as overpriced as Adobe products.

Much of this hand-wringing happened when Allaire got bought by Macromedia. What was the reaction at the time of that acquisition? "They're going to kill ColdFusion!" Mass hysteria. Macromedia then: Designers. Flash heads (Not that there's anything wrong with that ;-) Nothing of note on the server side. Macromedia now: Rich internet application developers with a 'next generation' deployment platform and an aggressive eye towards expansion. Great tools, both desktop and server side. Possible without CF? yes. Possible without the brains from Allaire? Not this quickly! Look at what CF6 and 7 have been...fantastic products, well supported. As for the integration between Flash and CF, the entire concept behind Flex, and the new stuff going into 8ball...WOW...without that merger, none of this would have happened. I for one think that Adobe's market cap and mindshare combined with the passion and tools of the Macromedia folks (community included) will result in a great company with even more innovation in both desktop and server tools. I can't wait to see the results.

I'm not going to start speculating on what will happen to my favorite image editor or web page editor, because that does no good. I am very concerned about the future of ColdFusion. It has come a long way, and the Macromedia/Allaire merger was awesome! I can only hope that Adobe will be just as committed to it as Macromedia was, so CF can continue to be a name to be reckoned with in web app. development. But I'm worried, and hope that more information will be released to alleviate some of those worries...

This is Macromedia's death. Money buys everything, even beautiful things.

I can't wait to hear what Forta has to say about this! Did Allaire see this coming before we all did? I just hope "Macromedia products" are still continued to be developed and it doesn't turn into - Photoshop, Illustrator (no more freehand), Acrobat and oh yea, we make Flash too. What about Dreamweaver? I'm sorry, but don't you mean GoLive? And what about Flash paper? The competition's answer to Acrobat???

As long as Adobe doesn't try to change all the products. Not too sure about "Adobe ColdFusion". Ugggh--this scares me to death.

Well, i'm sure that if the deal is embraced, they'll probably focus on a mix of Flash And Photoshop which are their 'star' products. So , we'll see a Flash with the power of design of Photoshop. :p well,I hope so.

Not sure how I feel about this... it definitely makes me a little nervous. Looking forward to seeing what Ben has to say about it. I think that if the deal is embraced how it should be, it could be very positive, but the fact that Adobe is a "design" company does give me a vote of confidence that they will switch directions at this point. Hopefully they realize that there is more to the web than Flash. As I said -- looking forward to Ben's comments on this deal.

cfreport format="macrobat" ;) Oliver

i could'nt bear to think that we'll say :' Adobe Coldfusion MX 7 '...lol

This is good news to me... I have always feared that MM would be eaten up by Microsoft and would take Adobe over Microsoft any day.

My greatest fear is that ColdFusion tech support and example applications (DEVNET) will become more like Acrobat, whereas you will have to become a paying member of their elite club. We as developers will have to carry on with our User Groups, Forums, and ColdFusion Help website's. Just my 2 cents worth! -Scott

Photoshop and Acrobat are not the only big products at Adobe, they also have InDesign for developing print publications. I think this is where CF will be saved because Adobe can now refine a product that a company can easily update both their website and catalog/brochures with. If you could use the same markup language to code your catalog and your web pages a company could save tons of time and money and that is what drives all this. As for guessing which of the other products will survive go to your local Borders/Barnes and Nobel and look at the books on the wall. There has to be 10 Dreamweaver books for every 1 GoLive. Just like there is 20 Photoshop for every 1 Fireworks. Hopefully Premiere will develop some built in features for outputting video to Flash, now there would be some real synergies.