I know it's stupid -- it's a *company* for goodness sake -- but reading the Adobe press release on the close of the Adobe/Macromedia acquisition tomorrow has left me feeling somewhat melancholic. Macromedia has been -- both directly and indirectly -- a very a big part of my life for the past six-or-so years. I've met some amazing people, both from within the company and from the Flash community and have been heavily involved in quite a few community projects, including my latest work, coordinating OSFlash.org.

It's a testament to the vision of certain key people at Macromedia that we have such a strong community and that there are so many sad farewells scattered around the blogosphere today. I can only hope that this focus will continue under Adobe as Adobe definitely needs to alter its cold corporate image if it is to capture the imaginations and hearts of the vibrant communities that exist around key Macromedia technologies.

I am personally very excited to see where Adobe takes the Flash Platform as it has such potential in the world of Web 2.0. Whether or not that potential is realized depends on how much Adobe understands the needs of its developer community and how it shapes its key policies with regards to open protocols, file formats and open source on the Flash Platform. I see these are key areas in which we need far-looking, enlightened, progressive policies if Flash is to survive the age of Web 2.0 and beyond and compete with standards-based, open solutions such as Ajax.

Macromedia, farewell old friend! Adobe, hello new friend?

The Farewell to a friend article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.