FREE FREEHAND MISSION STATEMENT

In recognition that Adobe FreeHand remains a widely-used vector application that continues to be an essential tool of professional studios and artistic endeavors, our mission is to ensure that Adobe acknowledges this fact and agrees to cooperate in our efforts to ensure FreeHand’s ongoing viability. Its 20+ year lifetime has made FreeHand the indispensable tool of thousands as it continues to enjoy worldwide popularity. It is regularly reported by FreeHand creatives that producing their work using Illustrator is either impractical, tedious, or unenjoyable, sometimes to extreme measure. As such, the Free FreeHand organization advocates on the behalf of those whose wishes have not been respected by Adobe. The need of this community is simple. We demand the ongoing maintenance and needed updates for FreeHand to work properly on today’s hardware and operating systems. This can be accomplished through one of three avenues as detailed under Determinations.

Efforts by Adobe to remove FreeHand from the design and arts communities in favor of its own Illustrator application has irrefutably established that Adobe decision-making has not been weighed in our best interests. In tested real-world situations, the functionality and strengths of FreeHand stand in stark contrast with the alternatives for which Adobe has insisted we abandon it. The FreeHand community finds this policy unacceptable.

The Free FreeHand Community
Free FreeHand was founded in September 2009 and is now a rapidly-growing organization of 5,000 members as of March, 2010. We expect continued growth as our message permeates through various media outlets. Although Adobe ceased development in 2006, FreeHand’s user base and loyal fans have become more organized and determined than ever. This is due in part to the inadequacies of Illustrator CS2, CS3, CS4 and the forthcoming CS5 as alternatives to FreeHand. There is no doubt that the marketing juggernaut of Adobe Systems, along with its management, will continue to insist there is no alternative to Illustrator. This does not change the hard facts of experience as testified by the creative professionals who earn their livings through the use of vector design software. In practice, this gives the distinct appearance that Adobe is behaving as a monopoly. Whether true or not, the result for consumers is the same: absence of choice, controlled pricing, and a lack of competition; all of which deprives users of the ability to influence product development to their satisfaction by “voting with their wallet”.

Our organization has a substantial online presence and our members actively dialog on subjects relating to FreeHand through our forums. We communicate regularly with the membership through our e-newsletter, forum, blog, web site updates, and social media channels. A number of articles have appeared in recent months in which our cause and arguments are clearly stated. We are fully dedicated to the cause of saving FreeHand and the aggressive pursuit of whatever action might be required to secure the future of FreeHand.

Determinations
As legal owners of licensed copies and multiple seats of FreeHand, we will continue to use FreeHand and advocate for FreeHand use in the graphic design, clothing design, textile design, illustration, education, and cartography industries. We are resolved that Adobe must recognize and act upon the premise of this documented mission statement: the ongoing maintenance and updating needed in order for FreeHand to work properly on today’s hardware and operating systems.

Adobe has the opportunity to honor this mission statement through any one of the three available options outlined below:
1. Release FreeHand to the Open-Source community.
2. Sell FreeHand to another private interest.
3. Develop and maintain FreeHand as a full part of the Adobe Creative Suite lineup.

Release FreeHand to the Open-Source community.
Should Adobe sponsor an Open-Source FreeHand, a leadership path that follows a similar strategy pioneered by Sun Microsystems, they may find these benefits:
• Innovations and new approaches to vector programming
• New features for Adobe Illustrator and InDesign
• Aura of goodwill and reaching out to customers
• Direct competition with other open-source apps (Inkscape, Scribus)
• Creating a new business model for this decade
• Customer base using both FreeHand and Illustrator
• Avoiding customer dissatisfaction and activism
• Alleviate piracy of Illustrator and InDesign
• Attract new customers from open-source FreeHand to the Creative Suite

Sell FreeHand to another private interest.
Should Adobe sell FreeHand to another developer, they may find these benefits:
• Revenue from the sale
• Focus on development of Adobe Illustrator
• Protect Adobe patents through contract negotiation
• Healthy competition creating better Adobe applications
• Avoid customer dissatisfaction and activism
• Avoid potential PR/Legal outcomes

Develop and maintain FreeHand as a full part of the Adobe Creative Suite lineup.
Should Adobe add FreeHand to the CS lineup and develop it, they may find these benefits:
• Adjunct to Illustrator with stronger interconnection
• FreeHand becomes an “Illustrator Elements” with its combined vector and DTP features
• Aura of goodwill with FreeHand customers
• Revenue from guaranteed update sales and new customers
• Avoid pr/legal outcomes

Until Adobe is willing to move forward in one of these three directions, our determined efforts will continue to expand. Failure to achieve compromise between Adobe and Free FreeHand will result in increasing volume of our outreach and PR efforts. Legal recourse has not been ruled out as an available option.

In sum, there is much to question about the legality of Adobe’s past actions which have led us to this eventuality. Our legal counsel agrees that were Free FreeHand to formally prosecute a case against Adobe, a prodigious quantity of evidence already points to the conclusions we have outlined. We wish to avoid such a wasteful expense of energy, time, and money, as it is the stated position of Free FreeHand that an amicably-negotiated solution could satisfy the stated goals in this mission statement. We ask that Adobe seriously consider working with the Free FreeHand organization to this end.

Addendum: Anti-Competitive Practices
Free FreeHand has taken a close look at Adobe’s historical behavior of acquiring smaller software companies as part of its long term goal of market domination. Despite occasional setbacks, such as the FTC intervention of 1994, Adobe has largely succeeded in what can only be called a monopoly. No other vector editing software on the market, whether the result of open source development or released by a for-profit enterprise, comes close to Adobe’s current market share. The 2005 acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe ensured that no threat would remain to their flagship vector product, Illustrator, on the Mac platform. It has been noted that the 1994 FTC decision which forced Adobe to return FreeHand to Altsys gave a number of reasons that proved surprisingly prescient; indeed, it describes the exact circumstances we find today almost to a letter.

In brief from the 1994 FTC report:

V. EFFECTS OF THE ACQUISITION
The proposed acquisition, if consummated, may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in the relevant markets in the following ways, among others:
a. It will increase the already high concentration in the relevant markets;
b. It will eliminate Aldus as a substantial independent competitive force in the relevant markets;
c. It will eliminate actual, direct and substantial competition between Adobe and Aldus;
d. It will eliminate competition between the two closest substitutes, Illustrator and FreeHand, among differentiated products in the relevant markets;
e. It will allow the merged firm unilaterally to exercise market power;
f. It will allow the merged firm to raise prices, either directly or through reduced discounting, promotions, or service, on either Illustrator or FreeHand or on both products;
g. It will allow the merged firm to reduce innovation by delaying or reducing product development; and
h. It will increase the likelihood of coordinated interaction.

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