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PROFOUND AND SCARY OBSERVATIONS [Fwd: Framemaker is perfect, therefor it's dead]

Hello Everyone,

Attached is Cas Tuyn's entry in the lively debate now going on,
on my Free Framers bulletin board, triggered by a strong rumor
that Adobe will no longer be going forward with FrameMaker.

Semiconductor-industry marketeer/philosopher Dave Wyland
observed years ago, about semiconductor hardware chips, that

    "The size of the solution now exceeds the size of the problem."


It seems that Dave Wyland's observation has now caught up with
software, and maybe with high tech in general  (excepting only
biological and environmental technology).  The usual marketing
term for this condition is

    MARKET SATURATION


which software suppliers have attempted to combat with the
planned-obsolescence strategies that Cas Tuyn mentions.
Software doesn't wear out in quite the same way that automobiles
do, and so planned obsolescence takes on a different form.

Perhaps Cas Tuyn has also identified a path, by which those of
us in the high-tech world may continue to find useful things to do
for which we can get paid — one of actually providing SERVICES.


Chuck Hastings      cwh2@earthlink.net

Vintage Silicon Logic         San José and Seattle




Hi,

Your objective is to create content using FrameMaker, Adobe's objective is to 
create money using you. This all works well when new features lure you into 
upgrades, and I've happily paid my subscription when FrameTech added tables 
in FM3, hypertext in FM4,  and graphic rotation in non-90 deg increments in 
FM5. But at a certain point in time, one must agree software is perfect for 
the job it was designed for. 

Software manufacturers increasingly face this 'problem' because it kills the 
income generated by upgrades and maintenance contracts. That, in its turn 
kills the developers' jobs who wrote the software, and introduces usage fees 
(essentially agreeing the software will not be updated). And then an old dog 
is suspected to learn new tricks: XML, Unicode, new OSes.

Just like the 8" floppy disks, 5.25" floppy disks, 3.5" floppy disks, and 
100/250 ZIPs came and went, and are now all obsoleted by CDRs (who
will be killed by DVD-Rs), you see the same in the software world. I went from 
WordStar to WordPerfect to FrameMaker (skipped Word <vbg>), and decided 
a few years ago that it was time to move on to XML, Unicode and Linux (2 out 
of 3 accomplished).

On a larger scale, paid software will disappear, and be replaced by paid 
services. People are noticing that the cost for MS-Windows, MS-Office, Adobe
Photoshop, Outlook, Exchange server and all other software are no longer 
justifiable when you only use 20% of the capabilities of those packages, and 
lower-cost alternatives deliver those 20%. We are replacing our SUN 
workstations with cheaper PC hardware, with Suse Linux, OpenOffice, GIMP, 
Evolution, etc. I'm still 'shopping' for a Linux XML package with repository, 
and when I have that I'm switched over.

Cas


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