incrediBILL - 11:50 pm on May 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

Adobe is not the web. Adobe is an annoyance. They should never have been allowed to gain that monopoly Flash position they occupy.

Previously Flash came from Macromedia, where my wife worked, which already had a dominant Flash position before Adobe purchased the company. Adobe was always a decent company as people I know that work there seem to love it.

Check out the history of Flash, it's hardly been Adobe until recently:
[en.wikipedia.org...]

Besides, SWF is a published file format, just like PDF, so there's nothing stopping anyone else from building tools to create or play those formats.

Read all about it, you can build your own:
[en.wikipedia.org...]

FYI Microsoft is trying to unseat them with ActiveX, Silverlight and XPS so it's hardly a dominant position, it's actively under attack. It's just that the Adobe products were just first, best of show, and have the home team advantage on the web at the moment.

Besides, they earn heaps on extremely overpriced desktop publishing and image handling software. Yet another monopoly position.

Since when is hard work, success and making a profit a problem?

I use Gimp and Paint.net, both free, both good quality, so I'm not seeing the "monopoly" here unless you insist on feeding them money, which I don't.