Microsoft buying Macromedia??

[Mad]

Dunno if its to go here or open discussion, feel free to change it if necessary.

Heres the history: http://www.futuremark.com/news/?newsarticle=200212/2002122401#200212/2002122401

[zero0w]

Hope it's not true. Or the monopoly will dominate even more than ever.

> Microsoft To Acquire Macromedia?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/23/1223232

In response to this rumor, I think it could be a good time to have a look at SVG - the vector drawing/animation (XML-document) format that can rival Flash in the future:

SVG format related info:

1. W3C.org - Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) (http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/)
2. SWF Is Not Flash (and Other Vectored Thoughts) (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/05/24/swf_not_flash.html)
3. Mozilla SVG Project (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/)

4. SVG On the Rise (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/06/06/svg_future.html)
5. Comparing .SWF (Shockwave Flash) and .SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) file format (http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/comparison_flash_svg.html)
6. Flash and SVG (http://www.eprg.org/projects/SVG/flash2svg/)

In the future, SVG can provide us another choice of (web) content format in case MS really buy out Macromedia :!: .

[Phoenix]

Hope that doesn't happen

[zrepiV]

microsoft is taking over. if they do buy macromedia, get ready for some error messages.

hmm... microsoft can be compared to the nazis. wonder who can take em down? lol.

[Carmofin]

error messages?
better get ready for flash files sending statistics about your daily amount of used toothpaste to some secret microsoft server.
but to be honest, i dont think microsoft likes flash, if they indeed bought it, then jsut to stop it, thats what i think anyway.

[Omega]

They buy the lower companies to eliminate the challenge between the 2, like the 3DFX...
Business life is damn so hard ;_;

[zero0w]

Originally posted by Carmofin
but to be honest, i dont think microsoft likes flash, if they indeed bought it, then jsut to stop it, thats what i think anyway.

It's interesting, because Microsoft will have native support for SVG format in Office 11 and the future version of Visio - so whether they buy Macromedia or not, Macromedia would be in for a fight against MS anyway.

[Quatro]

aw... that would s*ck big time! Microsoft really want other competition out fo the picture... geez, all they would do for money...

[ChrisRay]

They might just be interested in a few assets of microsoft.

[Quatro]

yeah... gaining profit...

[Carnage]

M$ buying macromedia???NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!only the fellowship can save us from m$ taking middle-earth now......oops,wrong story,anyway this is another proof that m$ wants to become the big money maker...if this happens then the chances of getting rid of m$ is small...damn you m$!!!!

[Kurbster]

I love dreamweaver too much.....I hate for it to be destroyed :p

[Kane]

Oh deary deary me.
Do people not remember the story of Frontpage?
Microsoft bought it. 97 was then released, basicaly the final version made by the original company. 98 made a few minor upates to do with stability. Then 2000 came along, and Frontpage became an excellent tool.
Just because Microsoft are buying it doesn't mean it's all gonna be buried. More than likely it will be integratedinto FP to make it that much better.
Yes MS are a monopoly, but you can't deny that they do produce some good products: The Gamevoice, Intellimouse Explorer, thier Sidewinder series is excellent, WindowsXP is stable, reasonably fast and compatible. Office XP is an excellent Office suite.....

[Quatro]

well what I hate about microsoft is that they want every software company that pose as a threat to their software to be dealt with by buying them out...

[Sir_Paul]

I can remember when on the Simpsons they wanted to buy out homers computer company and Bill said "i don't make money buy writing out checks!" and his guys are trashing the office.

[doggieiscool]

ahh.. one good think could come out of it.. macromedia flash preinstalled as windows default :D

[zero0w]

Originally posted by Kane
Yes MS are a monopoly, but you can't deny that they do produce some good products: The Gamevoice, Intellimouse Explorer, thier Sidewinder series is excellent, WindowsXP is stable, reasonably fast and compatible. Office XP is an excellent Office suite.....

I would just say Microsoft is able to crush competition with products of great business orientation - I do not think Microsoft produces great products on server and database - probably Linux/UNIX/BSD and Oracle are better in these departments. And I also believe given the pace of development and improvement of mozilla.org, IE will be surpassed or at least being equaled in a very near future. The true Microsoft Killer Product to business is MS Outlook AND Exchange Server - business folks need to keep email, schedule and contacts in order and this killer combination has no other serious competing products yet... Oh btw, monopoly is still illegal no matter it is a good or bad monopoly.

Think about it, if no one is able to use bootlegs, will everybody still endorse and support Microsoft as they would like to? Even for great usability and features I think Mac OS X is even more excellent in certain areas.

[ChrisRay]

Originally posted by zero0w


I would just say Microsoft is able to crush competition with products of great business orientation - I do not think Microsoft produces great products on server and database - probably Linux/UNIX/BSD and Oracle are better in these departments. And I also believe given the pace of development and improvement of mozilla.org, IE will be surpassed or at least being equaled in a very near future. The true Microsoft Killer Product to business is MS Outlook AND Exchange Server - business folks need to keep email, schedule and contacts in order and this killer combination has no other serious competing products yet... Oh btw, monopoly is still illegal no matter it is a good or bad monopoly.

Think about it, if no one is able to use bootlegs, will everybody still endorse and support Microsoft as they would like to? Even for great usability and features I think Mac OS X is even more excellent in certain areas.


If apple wanted to support IBM that would be there perrogative. But apple won't fess up and admit there not doing to well with the macintosh lineup. Had apple actually chosen to compete with Microsoft 5 years ago. Things could be very different now.

[zero0w]

Originally posted by ChrisRay
Had apple actually chosen to compete with Microsoft 5 years ago. Things could be very different now.

Maybe it's a bit late, but things are changing though.

With Mac OS X, Apple is targeting Windows users:

Slashdot: Porting to Mac OS X from Windows Win32 API
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/24/1650216

Not to mention OS X can join forces with Linux in running X11 and GNU applications; freshmeat.net also opened a new section for OS X exclusive projects and software. Now this is what I call to restore competition among industry. If only Apple finally decides to join the x86 family (PS: thru deploying in AMD Hammer powered system - according to certain rumor) can I say we have a healthy software industry not dominated/manipulated by monopoly.