Michael Cote over at Redmonk has written an exceptional piece on Adobe's attempts to build out a developer ecosystem. Even more pertinently, he identifies a range of principles and practices that will help any company do so, and particularly with open source (though not exclusively so). Of Adobe in particular he writes:If Adobe isn’t going to provide and maintain a complete stack up and down — a “suite dream” — Michael Cote over at Redmonk has written an exceptional piece on Adobe’s attempts to build out a developer ecosystem. Even more pertinently, he identifies a range of principles and practices that will help any company do so, and particularly with open source (though not exclusively so). Of Adobe in particular he writes:If Adobe isn’t going to provide and maintain a complete stack up and down — a “suite dream” — it too needs a codified conceptual basis for it’s development culture. (There’s always allegiance to an existing culture, but Adobe seems to want something new, if even “evolved.”) Otherwise, Adobe technologies and Adobe itself will be relegated to where it is now: the front-end, graphics, and document production and management. Once this architecture is laid out, Adobe can create the desire and need for developers to pull more and more Adobe technologies into their stacks rather than just picking out the tasty front-end technologies from the Adobe buffet. A large, flourishing ecosystem is better than a collection of independent ecosystems [this no doubt a point of contention]. As ever in the contemporary world of commercial software, creating and maintaining the market to collect your revenue from involves coming up with an ecosystem, often interlaced with open source. Indeed, with the conceptual ground work — the architecture laid out — you could see how Adobe could also start using open source to fill in the blanks in the system layers, even customizing and fitting those infrastructure bits to the Adobe architecture.Adobe is sitting on a massive opportunity, in my view, and open source is at its heart. I’m not sure if the company even realizes this yet, but it will become more apparent over time. In the meantime, open source or not, I agree with Michael: a company’s best bet for developing a community is around a technology or shared concepts. Adobe could opt for “both,” but I would argue the idea of openness is already so prevalent in that company (witness Flex, Acrobat Reader, PDF, etc., all of which reveal different conceptions of openness with a common theme running through them all) that it is the “shared concept” path it should take. The suite will build itself around this concept of openness at Adobe. Well said, Michael. I feel like I just got a great analysis that I didn’t even have to pay for. Where’s the “Contribute through an iTunes gift card” so that I can pay you? 🙂 Open Source