So we've been living with the thought of the impending acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe for about a month or so now, letting the idea seep in. We've still got some time to go before its finalized, but it seems like its all going to happen at this point. Like most of us, I've been thinking about the whole thing quite a bit, and while I'm a little concerned about the fate of some of my favorite technologies (though not too concerned because I'm pretty confident in their strengths), I'm much more concerned about the fate of our culture.

I guess in this, I'm siding with Macromedia (this is a Flash blog after all). While Macromedia pre-existed the internet boom, it really grew up with the web, and so for many web developers, the story of the web so far is told with Macromedia tools. Adobe, on the other hand, was born of the print world, a much older, more proper world. Now, don't get me wrong in all this. I love my Photoshop! It's not that I dislike Adobe at all, rather I've always felt like Adobe was one of those unapproachable, mammoth Corporations-with-a-capital-C (maybe it was all of those loan applications that I had to fill out in PDFs, guilt by association you know). To use an analogy, Adobe is classical rock. Macromedia is punk.

For a while there, the Macromedia world was fairly small. It felt almost like family. Macromedia has done a lot to promote that feeling, even recently. The Macromedia staff blogs have given us direct insight into he workings of the company, faces and names to put with the tools we use every day. Adobe has software that people use. Macromedia has people who use their software. I mean, everybody uses Photoshop! But I still cherish my FutureSplash Animator box with the post-acquisition Macromedia sticker.

In some ways, the whole thing reminds me of a John Hughes movie from the 80s where the uptight rich kid and the rebel working class kid fall in love. There are some pretty funny foibles along the way as they stumble into each other's worlds, but they all end up happy. The Adobe/Macromedia suit/countersuit legalities of the late 90s showed that both companies were slowly converging on the same ideas, flexible design tools that work cross media. So it seems right that the two would eventually merge. I'm just hoping that Macromedia (and the community around it) doesn't forget where it came from.