Read on Twitter
My Adobe Alternatives post is making the rounds again and with it the inevitable "just pirate it" responses. I'd like to explore why that may not hurt Adobe the way it seems like it does, especially if your goal is a general protest of Adobe's industry stranglehold. 1/6
Adobe is known as an "industry standard" and is so mostly because they were the first to do what they do well enough to gain ground early on. Now they maintain that status because they became so ubiquitous -- and piracy, ironically, helps them hold on to that ubiquity. 2/6
Adobe software is an industry standard because everyone uses it and everyone is obligated to use it because it's an industry standard. It's practically a Catch-22. Whether your use of the software is legitimate or not, it helps Adobe maintain dominance either way. 3/6
If you don't care about that, that's fine, keep doing what you do. But if you'd like to see Adobe's status change, piracy runs counter to your goal. Instead, help to support alternatives on the side because they cannot grow and become better alternatives without that support. 4/6
Case-in-point: Blender, open-source alternative to industry standards like Maya. On the left was Blender just a few years ago, and on the right is Blender now. An influx of attention and general user support helped push development far in a short amount of time. 5/6
If what you want is new industry standards, you should tend the garden of alternatives at least some of the time. They can grow to match Adobe eventually, but they will never do that if they are ignored simply for being imperfect in their early stages. 6/6
