Adobe has embraced open-source software for some products, but its Creative Suite portfolio looks like it will remain proprietary.
In a blog posting on Sunday, the company's top creative products executive, John Loiacono, made unflattering remarks about open-source creative software.
"Time is money," Loiacono said, linking to a blog by commentator Eric Vreeland, who observed: "Debugging recent installs of certain open-source software has wasted immense amounts of my spare time; charged at my hourly rate these hours represent a pile of cash bigger than that which full list-price versions of comparable commercial software would require for purchase." In the US, Vreeland opted for the $2,500 Creative Suite Master Collection, which bundles 12 Adobe products, such as Photoshop, Premiere and Illustrator.
Loiacono points to his open-source credentials as the top Sun software executive who oversaw much of that company's work releasing its Solaris operating system as open-source software.
"Obviously, I have thought about whether open source has a place in Adobe's creative products strategy. But what designers need is tightly integrated workflows and high reliability right out of the box, so the really important question to ask is: What's the impact to the user?" Loiacono said. "Open-source software can be a perfect solution. It's just not right for everything or for everyone — like many creative professionals who are on deadline and prefer to innovate versus integrate."
