How Adobe Can Kill Silverlight: Linux

This is not my idea, but John C. Dvorak's. Microsoft is making a full frontal attack on Adobe with SilverLight. Dvorak's suggestion is that Adobe should port the full creative suite to Linux, and once that's done make a fully optimized, custom version of Linux for Adobe designers/developers. How would this hurt SilverLight? It wouldn't directly, but it could potentially take money out of Microsoft's coffers (by taking away Windows market share).

I don't know if this would work or not, but I do know that the lack of Photoshop on Linux is one of the major things slowing Linux Desktop adoption. But at the same time...Linux has less than 1% of the market share on the Desktop. So Adobe is faced with this question: "If you build it, will they come?"

Macromedia made a version of ColdFusion for Linux, and Adobe continues to support this version (in fact, they keep expanding to more *nix platforms). I don't know what the market numbers are for their Linux version, but it must be doing OK, or they'd have abandoned it years ago. But of course, we're talking about Linux server, which has a MUCH larger install base than Linux desktop.

Dvorak's logic is that instead of "running" away from the big bear (Microsoft), Adobe should directly attack them where it hurts. I liked this statement at the end of the article: "Maybe it's time to give up on this model and grab a gun and shoot the damned bear. Adobe has a gun and should use it."