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Comment by yuchi | Hacker News Reader

UPDATE n. 2: Dylan Field (CEO of Figma) has addressed these kind of concerns on their public disclore of the fact: https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/

Citing him:

> Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to David Wadhwani.

As others have said, there’s really a missing OSS version out there that can compete feature-by-feature with Sketch / Figma / XD. Layout engine capabilities are the biggest missing feature in competitors.

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>[ACQUISITOR] is deeply committed to keeping [STARTUP] operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to [NEW OVERLORD]

You won't believe what happens next.

It’s like there’s some sort of playbook on this

https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

This is amazing, thanks for sharing it. Also quite disheartening.

same thing happened to us, our ceo also sent us a similar email. He bounced 3 months later to enjoy his billions i guess.

Phew, I was worried for a second, because of [NEW OVERLORD]'s persistent track record of killing babies. So glad to hear that [STARTUP] CEO thinks it's going to be fine, in a public statement nonetheless! More than anyone, he must have done his due diligence.

Every time one of these "statements" happens I'm reminded of what Palmer Luckey said about Oculus when Facebook bought them, or what Jan Koum said about WhatsApp. How long before Dylan leaves to "spend time with family"?

Exactly, he is contractually obligated to keep the status quo for the time being.

After some years and the clauses have lapsed and Adobe have done what they always do, the criticism will come.

I'm sure he knows it as well, but hundreds of millions of dollars will shut anyone up for a period of time.

I hear "take time off for health" often.

He must know his statement is pointless. How many times have we seen big aquisitions with promises not to mess with things, only for it to happen a year or two down the line.

You don't drop 20bn on something to let it sit at it's current level.

They'll be integrating creative cloud and making it part of the subscription. I dare say they'll close the loophole on the free plan as well that lets you have unlimited designs.

> Like many of you, I grew up using Adobe software and it was a critical part of my personal creative journey.

Yes, it was the part of your journey that made you realize it was a company that made bad design software, and you devoted your life to making an alternative to it. For me, it was the part of my journey I was happy to leave behind to use your alternative.

I think it's okay if he wants to make $20B, but don't spin it! A blog post like this makes me lose trust, it doesn't reassure me.

I'm just going to assume he'll leave Adobe in one year to move on to his next adventure.

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