Re: Influencing Adobe on FrameMaker

[Cas Tuyn <Cas.Tuyn@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

As a UNIX FM user since 2.0, I too am worried about FrameMaker's
fate after they where taken over by Adobe. However, FrameMaker 
could have gone down with FrameTechnologies, but Adobe saved the 
product.

Adobe is as puzzled about the future as we are. As a company they 
want to make money, which means selling high volumes of a product.
They bought Frame to push Acrobat, which axed FrameReader and in 
the future perhaps FrameViewer. When FM could not deliver the volume
of Acrobat sales, they made PDFwriters for Word etc. 

The UNIX market will never be big because it is splitered over a few 
different flavours which all run on expensive hardware, but the Linux
market looks promissing. Cheap hardware and a free, reliable OS that
is gaining userfriendliness with every release are atracting not only
the anything-but-Microsoft 'geek' community, but also cost-conscious 
corporate users. 

The key is money in volume amounts. This means that any platform 
not used by volumes of end users is going to loose commercial interest.
At the moment, Sun Solaris, Windows and Mac are volume platforms, 
and Linux is about to become one. Only WordPerfect and FrameMaker
are available crossplatform against Linux-only KWord or Star-office.

If Adobe plays it smart, they keep officially supporting the Sun,
Win and Mac platform, while gaining market share on Linux with 
frequently improving free beta releases of Linux Frame. Charging 
money for Linux Frame should be done after the volume has been 
secured, and pricing should be between the price of PC/Linux versions 
of Word/WordPerfect and the PC version of Framemaker. By calling the
frequently improving versions on Linux 'beta', they can officially 
launch it for money once it work completely _and_ there is a substantial
amount of users.

Cas Tuyn
Sun, PC and Linux user of Framemaker.

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