I really don’t get it how people can continue pirating proprietary software like some Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) when there are quality, Free Software alternatives like the Gimp or Inkscape.

Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe software players and video tools. We imagine that Adobe has no illusions that this will stop copyright infringement -- any more than dozens of other DRM systems have done so -- but the introduction of encryption does give Adobe and its customers a powerful new legal weapon against competitors and ordinary users through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Over the years, Adobe has become more Linux friendly. First, Adobe released an excellent version of its Flash Player for Linux, and, more recently, the company launched a version of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for Linux. Now, however, with Strobe, its just announced Flash framework, Adobe looks like it may be getting more open-source friendly as well.

Adobe has released Flash Player 10 Beta 2 (10.0.0.525) for Linux. On top of features from Beta 1, this Flash 10 release adds windowless mode (transparency and page elements on top of a Flash applet), better Linux webcam support, new languages, and speed/stability improvements.

"...Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe software players and video tools..."

Around the time of the release of Ubuntu 7.10, I tried out the Gnash Flash player included in that release. Because Adobe’s Flash player can not be redistributed in the default Ubuntu installation, a choice of players are offered when you visit a page in Firefox with Flash content. There are three options in Ubuntu 8.04: Adobe Flash, Swfdec (new to this version), and Gnash.

Fedora 15, code-named Lovelock, does not ship with commercial applications. Which means that you are not able to install essential applications like Adobe Flash Player from the graphical package manager. There are a few open source Flash plugins, but they do not render current Flash content very well, if at all.

It looks as if Wine might be supporting Adobe's Flash CS3 as well as Photoshop CS3 on Linux in the near future. With the recent help from Google to get Photoshop CS and CS2 working properly in Wine a huge chunk of the underlying architecture work was put in place for CS3 application support. There are still a number of bugs that need to be triangled and fixed before CS3 is properly supported but this is great news none the less.

As a long time Photoshop junkie and Gimp fan, this week has been a joyous overload. Gimp 2.6 released today and Photoshop CS4 has been announced (they need some time to hype before release). And again the all important question is being asked by some overenthusiastic Gimp lover whether we have finally come close to having a free, open-source Photoshop alternative.