Adobe and Macromedia are merging. That means there is an even bigger software behemot for graphic design.

But what will happen on the free software side ?

Tim Bray has a post about what could happen to Flash. I just hope he is right. There is really something I'd like to disappear as is is Flash, just because Flash by itself, breaks all the concept put in WWW by breaking navigation, hyper-text and open information into it own world. And releasing the player as Open Source code wouldn't solve that, even if it could help developing alternatives. Dave Shea point of view on the buy out may balance this argument and question about the opportunity for SVG.

And Alan wonder what will happen to Freehand, I'd say it might become orphan like it happened during the Adobe-Aldus merger. BTW, and encourage people to try Inkscape. If they have to change tool because Freehand gets orphaned, that might be a good opportunity.

Beside that, all of this is pure conjecture. Wait and see. But looks like yet another monopoly.

The Register has an article for business oriented readers.