A contribution

The http://www.oldapps.com site saved my bacon today when I needed to find downlevel versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader for testing browser plug-in detection code. Assuming that Adobe makes those downloads available anywhere on their site, they did an excellent job of hiding them.

This is the second time in fewer than 24 hours that I've found critical development information about Adobe products on a third-party site. Apparently Adobe's going the way of Microsoft in the sense that they no longer grok the fundamental rule of platform-building: Don't piss off your developers.

On the surface, it seems like a no-brainer. That is, I suppose, until you factor in the effect of PHBs in corner offices. It's not even that these wankers are twelve-o-clock flashers. It's merely another facet of the One Cheeseburger Too Many Syndrome that you find everywhere else in that feudal Ponzi scheme otherwise known as corporate capitalism.

But in this age when programmers have more tools to play with than ever before, only the megalomaniacal egos of prima donna companies like Microsoft and Adobe can believe that manufactured "cool" will draw much mind-share--much less the best and brightest of those minds--to their tools and toys.

Or at least that's my opinion. Now that Sun's open-sourced Java, I'm pretty certain that I'm no longer developing with any proprietary code. Even the PDFs are cut straight from OpenOffice, not Adobe. Granted, I'm not doing anything remotely bleeding-edge, and the cool factor is probably in the negative. But the fact that I can do that--just the fact that I have the option of ditching the buggy and temperamental BlueFish for Geany, for instance--should keep the IDE suite-peddling crowds at the proprietary companies awake at night. But you and I know that the the barons of the corporate world are too busy slipping stilettos into their rivals to pay notice if the kingdom is crumbling about them. But, then, it's not like they've ever had to pay the price of their arrogance, greed or stupidity: That's only for the little people.

Sadly (from my perspective), the OldApps website does not have a PayPal donation link. All they ask is that you post a link to their site, and if interested, visit the websites of their advertisers. They, like so many other non-commercial resources (Wikipedia, SourceForge, etc., etc.) are making developers' lives easier in ways that would never, ever occur to the 800-lb. gorillas to try, even when their bottom line is directly affected.