[Leica] Adobe Stock Market Price

[Brian Reid]

On 2019-06-17 22:58, Frank Filippone via LUG wrote:
> Their background ( for
> the youngsters) was the licensing of type faces ( what we now call
> fonts). 

I was quite involved in the founding of Adobe. I had founders' stock 
before their IPO. I sold it a long time ago (and did well), but I've 
paid attention since.

Adobe was founded because John Warnock wanted to create PDF, but since 
nobody knew what it was and he couldn't get funding for it, he created 
PostScript as part of a contract with Apple to produce the original 
LaserWriter. PostScript evolved into PDF, and was eventually EOL'd. The 
original Apple LaserWriter was Adobe's first product.

Adobe got into the font business in order to make laser printers more 
marketable. In the very beginning we used to take typeface catalogs and 
enlarge the letterforms on a Xerox copier and then digitize them. In the 
United States there is no legal protection for the shape of a 
letterform. You can copy the shape of Helvetica letters without risking 
a lawsuit, but you can't call it Helvetica. So it was called Geneva. 
Adobe didn't start owning or licensing fonts until they wanted to sell 
internationally.

Adobe got into the software business with Illustrator. Warnock wanted to 
make it easier for people to make PostScript files so they would be more 
likely to buy PostScript printers. When the Knoll brothers, who created 
Photoshop, got tired of doing software sales (and one of them needed to 
focus full-time on his day job working for George Lucas) they sold it to 
Adobe, which hired Thomas. Adobe had figured out that it needed a raster 
editor in addition to a spline editor, and Photoshop was it.

The upper management and board of directors of Adobe were kind and 
gentle people. After Adobe bought Macromedia in late 2005, Macromedia's 
upper management people were merged into Adobe. In my opinion (I am not 
stating this as fact, but just what I think based on what I saw) Adobe 
was soon dominated by the Macromedia people, and has ever since been 
operated in their more predatory style.

Some time soonish I am going to post my experiences at trying to use a 
rented Photoshop/Lightroom version side by side with my trusty old 
purchased CS6 Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and Bridge. 
(And the venerable Fireworks, which I still need to use several times 
per year.) Summary: it is a hot mess, and a major nuisance. If you 
depend on both photography and graphic design products from Adobe, you 
are basically screwed unless you rent everything.