Adobe can adopt a very monopolistic stance like Apple or Microsoft and create a closed system, or it can reach out and help co-create the technological ecosystem, which for the most part it does. So in the interests of helping Adobe keep good developer relations, attention must be drawn to the issue when it falls down on that commitment.

When you develop a product in someone else’s sandbox you can go from being a value-added player to being a competitor in the blink of an eye. Why? Because as soon as someone charges money for components they are a business subject to competition — just like every other business in the world, (that isn’t being subsidized by a government).

I can appreciate the shock of going from believing you’re a value-added player to finding yourself a competitor (or maybe even going out of business), but I firmly believe Adobe’s responsibility is to developing the best product they can for their users, so their users decide to pay for Adobe products to get their work done.

A spelling app should be a core competency in any type of publishing application. In this context that a 3rd-party had to write one implies Adobe was not really doing its job, which rightly makes them look bad. My guess is Adobe eventually decided to correct this because bottom-line they recognized they were adversely impacting user’s workflows.

So while I agree with you spell-checking is a basic requirement for many of the applications developed by Adobe, I disagree Adobe had any type of formal obligation to warn anyone they were doing their own spell checker. Quite the contrary, Adobe’s rock-bottom obligation to their users is to supply as complete a toolset as possible, to get their core work done as efficiently as possible, as required by current trends.

As I see it every other archology rests on this bedrock.