At 11:03 AM -0700 7/24/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 measl@mfn.org wrote:
While it is a consummation devoutly to be wished, I predict that the "backlash" will be gone in a mere matter of weeks, if not days. Let's face it: the people most likely to be Adobe *customers* are anything but hungry. A fat customer is an apathetic customer...
It would take a *lot* to alienate Adobe's customers on a substantial enough basis to affect Adobe. Most of them probably haven't even heard about this debacle and if they did, wouldn't care.
But Adobe has one other check on its behavior -- it lives in the valley and *HAS TO* attract really bright geeks to work there.
Really bright geeks have probably heard about this and are angry about it. This will hurt them in recruiting, and (unconfirmed rumor) maybe it has already cost them somebody they can't replace.
This, by the way, was exactly what I said in my articles: that Adobe's ability to _recruit_ will be affected by this P.R. black eye. Someone mutated the point into a claim that Adobe's product sales would be affected, which is doubtful. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns