Jon, Thank you for your thoughtful email. Adobe is collecting feedback on this announcement, and the decision makers are considering the points that you and others have made.
Pat --- In [email protected], "jon_ferraiolo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi Pat, > Now that I am a member of the community and no longer an employee of > Adobe, here is my reaction: > > (1) First off, I believe that Adobe deserves a great amount of > appreciation for their contributions to SVG and the open standards > world for their activities in previous years. Adobe provided a > high-quality free implementation of an SVG viewer at large expense. > (Pat, you know this perhaps better than anyone.) Adobe also has > provided (and presumably will continue to provide) excellent support > for SVG in some of its products, particularly Illustrator. Adobe has > also made large contributions within the standards community on SVG. > > (2) It is understandable that at some point Adobe would announce the > end-of-life for Adobe SVG Viewer. Since the Macromedia acquisition (at > least, perhaps even earlier), it is clear that Adobe doesn't consider > the SVG viewer to be strategic. Also, browsers are adding SVG support > natively. > > (3) HOWEVER, I believe that some of the details regarding this > end-of-life announcement are unacceptable to the community and not in > Adobe's own best interests. To me, it is OK to stop "support" > (presumably developer support and security fixes) on Adobe SVG Viewer > in the relative near-term, but instead of giving four months of > advanced notice (i.e., 1/1/07), it should be something measured in > years, something in the range of 2-4 years. (Note: 5 years is the > usual amount for developer-oriented software.) > > (4) It reflects badly on Adobe that it did not donate the ASV source > code (at least the higher-level logic that sits above the graphics > rendering engine) to open soure. If Adobe isn't going to use ASV, then > it should give it to the community so they can use it. Given how Adobe > promoted industry adoption of ASV in the early days and thereby > convinced many developers to build mission-critical applications using > SVG, it is the least that Adobe could do. > > (5) But the worst part of this announcement is the removal of ASV > downloads as of 1/1/08, with no option for others to host a different > ASV download site. As others have pointed out, this will be > devastating to those poor souls who made a commitment to ASV in the > past and need their deployed SVG applications to continue working in > IE, which today has something like 80% market share and is unlikely to > support SVG natively before a couple of years go by. This particular > decision reflects badly on Adobe as a business partner with > developers. If nothing else, I appeal to Adobe to rethink this part of > their decision. How much does it cost a company to maintain a single > web page that is already working? If ASV quits working in some > situations, such as ASV not running under Vista, then just add text to > the download page alerting people that ASV has been EOL'd and is known > not to work with Vista. (But the better approach would be to open > source ASV so that the community can fix any such bugs.) > > Jon Ferraiolo > IBM > > > Adobe has decided to discontinue support for Adobe SVG Viewer. There > > are a number of other third-party SVG viewer implementations in the > > marketplace, including native support for SVG in many Web browsers. > > The SVG language and its adoption in the marketplace have both matured > > to the point where it is no longer necessary for Adobe to provide an > > SVG viewer. > > > > SVG is an established vector image format. Adobe currently supports > > SVG in several of its authoring and server products, including > > Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Version Cue, Graphics Server, > > FrameMaker, and FrameMaker Server. > > > > Adobe customer support for Adobe SVG Viewer will be discontinued on > > January 1, 2007. > > > > For more information on this decision and answers to questions about > > the discontinuation of Adobe SVG Viewer, please see > > http://www.adobe.com/svg > ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ---- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
