The growing battle between Apple and Adobe and the possibilities of extended lawsuits between the two companies has re-invigorated a 5,000-strong group of graphic designers in their fight against Adobe and its shelving of the popular FreeHand vector illustration program.
Free FreeHand is a growing group of designers who have banded together to try to protect the software they use for their livelihood, FreeHand, from extinction due to Adobe's tactics.
FreeHand is a rival to Adobe Illustrator, but has been owned by Adobe since 2005, and has not been updated since.
“With Adobe’s CS5 just released and millions of Illustrator users, why does Adobe care to suppress FreeHand? A niche user audience of an estimated 20- or 30,000 designers should not be of concern to a corporation like Adobe,” group spokesperson Christine Stepherson told PC Advisor.
“Letters and more than 1,000 postcards have fallen on deaf ears at Adobe. The request has been to make upgrades or release FreeHand to the open-source community. But after Adobe’s ten-year strategy to shut down its main competition, many feel that the likelihood is slim.”
The US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are rumoured to be discussing starting an antitrust inquiry into Apple's policy of requiring iPhone and iPad developers to use only Apple's programming tools.
Stepherson references Adobe’s possible legal action when she asks whether “Adobe has turned the mirror on its own practices”.
While Free Freehand understands that Adobe is a private company that decides where to invest its R&D, if updates can’t be made to make the product useable for the future, the FreeHand community believes Adobe should release the product to an open-source community.
The group has not ruled out legal action as a means of persuading Adobe of its commitment to this cause.
"Corporations that buy and bury the products of others, just because they are unable to produce a better product, do harm to our society. Not only do they act unethically, they also obstruct progress in this country — all in the name of corporate profits!" states the group on its website.
FreeHand is a widely used vector-design application that is an essential tool of professional studios and graphic designers. It is used in the graphic design, clothing and textile design, illustration, education, and cartography industries. Like its rival Adobe Illustrator it is a vector software application that allows infinitely scalable shapes and effects.
FreeHand was created by Altsys and licensed to Aldus, which released versions 1 to 4. When Aldus merged with Adobe its future was deemed at risk because of Adobe’s rival Illustrator vector program.
Following intervention by the Federal Trade Commission to prevent a purchase due to anti-competitive characteristics Adobe was forced to return FreeHand to Altsys soon after the merger.
Altsys was then bought by Macromedia, which released FreeHand versions 5 to 10 and 11/MX. In an ironic and possibly fatal twist Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005, returning FreeHand to the home of Illustrator.
FreeHand "basically hasn’t been updated in eight years", complains the Free FreeHand group.
Without updates, FreeHand is no longer supported by newer technology, forcing FreeHand designers to run outdated operating systems on old hardware or switch to Adobe’s flagship product, Illustrator.
Free FreeHand expects the software to be completely unusable on pending operating systems sometime in the next five years, if not earlier.
On its FreeHand product page Adobe states that: “No updates to FreeHand have been made for over four years, and Adobe has no plans to initiate development to add new features or to support Intel-based Macs and Windows Vista.
“To support customer workflows, we will continue to sell FreeHand and offer technical and customer support in accordance with our policies.
“While we recognize FreeHand has a loyal customer base, we encourage users to migrate to the new Adobe Illustrator CS4 software which supports both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs and Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista.”
(Adobe Creative Suite has since been updated to version 5.)
Free FreeHand accuses Adobe of creating a monopoly in the vector-editing software market?
“The important and over-arching topic is that consumers no longer have a choice in the programs they wish to use to make a living,” says Stepherson.
“Free FreeHand believes that competition and options should exist in the marketplace and feels that it is vital to creativity in the design world.
“We have asked that Adobe either provide updates to the software to make it viable on current operating systems, or release it another company or an open-source community.
Free FreeHand believes that the open-source community could quickly make FreeHand compatible with new hardware and operating systems. It points to existing examples in open sourcing software, including Solaris (Sun Operating Systems) as Open Solaris, Netscape as Mozilla (Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino), StarOffice as OpenOffice (NeoOffice on Mac OS), and Visio’s product IntelliCAD.
“The lack of competition is also not good for users of Adobe Illustrator. The lack of innovation and total price control means Illustrator users are getting a lacklustre product with each upgrade and have nowhere else to turn if they are unhappy with the product,” Stepherson warns.
The group demands one of these actions of Adobe:
- Release FreeHand to the Open-Source community.
- Sell ?FreeHand? to another private interest.
- Develop and maintain FreeHand as a full part of the Adobe Creative Suite lineup.
The 5,000 active members of Free FreeHand are led by the organizing efforts of:
Thomas Thü Hürlimann, former Art Director of Macworld & Computerworld Switzerland, a graphic designer & multimedia artist who has worked with FreeHand since 1987 (Aldus version 1.0); Jabez Palmer of Bez Design, Seattle, whose first experience with MacDraw on a Macintosh Plus in 1986 made an indelible impression on his psyche; and book designer Mark Gelotte, who began computer arts with Aldus FreeHand 3.
Free FreeHand can be reached at freefreehand.org.
Comments
Colby Fulton said: The same think happened with GoLive the web design program Definitely superior to Dreamweaver in terms of user interface Adobe stopped updating it I wish theyd bring it back or had integrated it better into Dreamweaver
Simon said: I have been a member of Freefreehand for several months and I received a newsletter today saying they had activated their legal action against Adobe Good When i first started to learn computing about 15 years ago I did a course at the Apple Centre which included Illustrator and by chance soon after hit upon Freehand It is such a wonderful programmeJust a thought why doesnt Adobe swallow their pride admit Freehand is the superior product and drop Illustrator instead Or even integrate it That would be the perfect and easy solution
dave said: please save Freehand We would all pay gladly for this update Adobe
Brian W said: Its quite true that FreeHand would be a great loss to the creative community regardless of how Illustrator develops in the future Ive looked at Illustrator a number of times and found it totally unsuited to the work I want to do It would be far too restrictive and so would CorelDraw or Inkscape In fact since my studio first went digital Ive done about 95 of my print work using FreeHand and Photoshop including multi-page brochures and reports Its been the best most streamlined and versatile production tool in the box And for the creation of fonts and other critical vector work also an ideal solution Does Adobe perhaps fear the impact on InDesign too if FreeHand were allowed to continue
mikimix said: Illustrator was always a step behind FreeHand and Adobe engineers are frustrated by it Dont kill the competence beat it honestly and with good work Free FreeHand
Simon Watson said: A new improved Freehand would provide welcome competition to Illustrator and ultimately competition improves products So Adobe release the code you can then stop selling it and someone Quark could have a bash at reworking it for Intel
thirtyfour said: Tried illustrator a number of times it isnt a straight swap the two products may do the same thing on a very basic level but its not the basics we care about As a community we have had a tool which made our creative lives easier why then should we be bullied into leaving it and paying for the privilege Set it Free By the way Dummy how about if I took Photoshop away from you and gave you Kais Photo Soap
cyclopsdx said: The competition IS as good - actually better - and its called FreeHand Adobe own both and dont want to admit that a competitor whom they acquired had a product that is more efficient and easy to use than their bloated sluggish application they continue to develop for Theyd rather force their home-grown app Ai onto the creative industry by killing off FH so that they can control the vector-app market because it makes commercial sense not because its the right thing to do from both a creative and economic standpoint for their customers Ive been using both apps for 20 years and FH is still the most efficient and creatively flexible Isnt that what our business is all about Nice to see the playground bully getting a taste of their own medicine
MacDaddy said: You are a dummy Dummy Anyone past infancy with even cursory knowledge of vector graphics knows Free Hand was the bomb Adobe has tried to let it die for ten years and still it lives Good systems have a way of sticking around Adobes failure to open source or sell is based on fear Illustrator sucks and everyone knows it
kenowerpower said: Long Live Free Hand
Snaptophobic said: I try to get on with Illustrator Its a powerful application thats for sure However I still find it very frustrating to use - even after a decade of use - and eventually fall back to FreeHand just to get a job done quickly Sure there are other competing products but only Inkscape you mention is cross-platform CorelDraw has not been on the Mac since the 1990s Adobe should grow a pair and let the open source community have the code for FreeHand
Dummy Spit said: Monopoly No competing productsWhat about coreldraw inkscape etcOh so there is a competitive market its just that the competition isnt as good as Illustrator and the one they choose to use is no longer supportedDoesnt sound like very strong grounds to me - move on people