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Recently, John C. Dvorak, columnist with MarketWatch posed an interesting challenge: Adobe could fend off Microsoft by embracing Linux.  Well, first off, his rationale behind his was moreso a response to Microsoft’s Silverlight technology.  Microsoft is attempting to build a replacement for Adobe’s venerable Flash player, a technology thousands upon thousands of websites use to serve dynamic animation and information.  Dvorak then made the statement that Adobe should port their CS Suite to Linux.

Now, while I don’t necessarily disagree with this statement – I would love to see Adobe embrace Linux, after all they are a member of the Linux Foundation now – I think Mr Dvorak should have stopped there: Adobe should embrace Linux. And perhaps maybe explain his point in a little more detail.  Except, he kept going with his train of thought into a realm I don’t necessarily agree with.

He went from “Adobe should embrace Linux” to “Adobe should build their own Linux OS for Photoshop.”  Now wait just a minute.  Mr. Dvorak, you seem to be suggesting Adobe develop an entire Linux distribution solely for the purpose of running Adobe software.  Now let’s hold that thought for a moment.

Big software companies like Adobe have historically not developed their software for Linux desktop systems due to a lack of market share.  This is a fact Linux users have suffered through for years now.  As a secondary thought, most of the time Linux is seen by most people as sort of an “open source only” club.  While open source software is preferred in the Linux philosophy, its not necessary.  Software vendors have the ablity to provide precompiled binaries of their software for Linux users.  Adobe already does this with their Flash player, however buggy it may be.

Now, returning to the previous statement Dvorak made about Adobe spinning its own distribution.  Why? Historically Adobe hasn’t shifted many of their resources to develop their products on Linux, and now you are suggesting they create an entire distribution?  I don’t think this is the correct path Adobe should take if they want to “fend off” Microsoft’s encroachment into their territory, after all thats what your article was supposed to be about, correct?

There is an easier solution to this question.  Adobe should embrace Linux.  But not in the Dvorak described in his article.  Adobe would do well to pay more attention to the Linux market segment by:

1. Hiring or redistributing some development talent into working on Linux ports of their software
2. Build in Linux support in future versions of their software
3. Support Linux at the distribution level (i.e. Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, and their commercial counterparts)

Addressing these 3 points, Adobe would need to hire some Linux developers or otherwise create a Linux group within their folds in order to efficiently work at the problem. Yes, that costs money and time, understandably.  However if Photoshop, just one piece of Adobe’s pie, were supported on Linux, alot more people may be apt to use Linux more often, thereby increasing market share and justifying Adobe’s expenditure.

Adobe could also adopt an OS-agnostic approach to developing their products.  This type of development strategy is basically a way to reuse almost all the code within an application across multiple operating systems.  Adobe currently supports Macintosh systems and Windows systems.  Since there is no documentation available for reference, lets assume 70% of the code in Photoshop is OS-agnostic, meaning it runs on both Mac and Windows computers without needing changes.  The remaining 30% is OS-specific code needed to run the other 70% (application launchers, window manager code, etc).  So, in theory, with guessing at the relative percentages, the code base of Photoshop would need to rise by 30% in order to include Linux.  Now, in CS4 or whatever Adobe deems to call the next version of their Creative Suite they can knock that ratio to 90%-10%, then it goes to say that Adobe can write an additional 10% of code to support Linux.

Finally, Adobe would also do well to support the major Linux distributions.  This is where stability comes in.  Microsoft and Apple provide stable APIs for their software to hook into.  Linux does the same.  Adobe could certify their products to work with current versions of major distributions similar to the way they certify their software for Windows and OS X.

So, in summary:  Mr Dvorak, you have a good argument as to why Adobe should support Linux.  Adopting Linux would give another market segment for Adobe to shine in.  However, I don’t think Adobe should be developing their own entire distribution based solely on having their products run on the platform.  What Adobe can do is to focus their efforts on porting their prized Creative Suite applications to the major Linux distributions in a manner that provides the same user experience across all 3 Operating System market segments: Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Yes, doing so would require resources Adobe has historically not wanted to tap into either because of cost or by figuring their major battlelines are on Windows and Macintosh.

Adobe, please port your software suite to Linux. Not only would you be combating Microsoft in an entirely new arena to which they aren’t accustomed to, but you’d be well on your way to support a computing platform that is gaining ground slowly but surely.  If anything, supporting Linux within the near future (perhaps in your next iteration of your Creative Suite) would give you a great foothold into a platform that people, your customers, might find more attractive if only your software was available on it.

And please, fix Flash too.