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Comment by houseabsolute | Hacker News Reader

I continue to be impressed with the license Adobe gives their official representative. This is not the first unprofessional reaction I've seen on this blog. Yes, it is understandable. Is it wise? Maybe a better worded response could inflame the minds of the abused more effectively and not sound like a temper tantrum.

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The professional thing is to have your lawyers slip changes into a legal agreement and to make no public statement on it.

Which is worse?

False dichotomy.

Don't assume that he's presenting Adobe's only alternate course of action. He's taking two different courses of action taken by two different companies and asking the reader to compare them.

The problem is that his comment is totally irrelevant. Whether what Adobe is doing is better than what Apple is doing has zero bearing on whether it's the best thing for Adobe to do, which is what my comment was about. The rhetorical tactic he was employing was to make it seem as if there are only two options, be Apple or be Adobe as it is in this post. That rhetorical dichotomy is misleading, even if he wasn't making an exclusive logical statement.

Professional doesn't equal good, is what I was going for. Professional just means they are smiling when they stab you.

Again, these two continuums are completely unrelated.

Stab <---> Not Stab

Professional <---> Not Professional

My claim is that a professional, not-stab approach would be more effective than a not-professional, not-stab approach. To me it seems like this is a bit difficult to argue against, but I suppose it's possible that this temper tantrum post will be more effective than a strong-but-professionally-worded post in the same direction. Maybe you disagree.

Regardless of whether you do, comparing Apple's behavior to Adobe's is irrelevant and misleading. Comparing the two might incorrectly lead people to believe that this post is a good idea because it compares favorably with what Apple has done. In fact, whether this post is a good idea is completely unrelated to how bad Apple's behavior is.

theflashblog.com is not an official Adobe blog.

Let me clarify -- theflashblog.com is not produced by Adobe, the company. It is written by an official representative of Adobe, but it is not the official response of Adobe the company, and the site is not an official Adobe site.

> Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment . . .

I clarified my comment -- there is a distinction between an official adobe blog, and a blog by an official representative of Adobe.

Be that as it may, I said nothing about the blog being Adobes official blog, only that I was surprised by license and freedom they give to their rep.

Especially compared to the restrictive, 1984-style Apple employees. Apple has become big brother.

That's true, however since the original HN thread title was "Adobe Reacts...", which combined with your comment gacw the impression that the post was an Adobe response by an Adobe representative. Of course now the title has been changed (at my suggestion...) which makes this all look a bit silly :).

I don't think people care about the technical difference. In practical terms, if you are an "official representative", you should keep your personal views to yourself, as people will assume your "view" is influenced by the company that pays your salary.

"Disclaimer -- This is my personal blog. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer. "

Nonetheless, he claimed in this post that he was speaking as Adobe's representative. In my mind, if you explicitly make that claim, all the disclaimers in the boilerplate avail you nothing.

The fact that Adobe has some editorial control of it (even after the fact) means that Adobe is concerned that the personal opinions of their official representative may reflect badly on Adobe. There's no absolute choice here between "official Adobe blog" and "personal blog" -- it's somewhere in the middle. The only way it could truly be one guy's personal opinion is if he remained completely anonymous.

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