business model
A significant part of Adobe are in a business where their user base is not growing rapidly. New features and applications are hard to create and sell to the existing user base. Especially with the built in 'you'll need a new box to run this on'. Having bought Macromedia they have destroyed any credible opposition, but even so, they are not in a growing market. Their model therefore has been to add features on an 18 month renewal cycle, looking to sell a bunch of upgrade licenses to existing prepress shops and designers who have to support the latest version just in case. Pretty cynical really.
There are however bits of Adobe that are open minded. Read the licenses for PDF and PostScript and look at some of the labs projects. It's not all black and white.
That said I think the people against the wall immediately before Adobe should be those at SEC who approved the Macromedia buy out.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
