Flash Catalyst (Prototyping/Design) & Flex Builder 4 (OO Flash) betas released

Flash Catalyst (Prototyping/Design) & Flex Builder 4 (OO Flash) betas released(labs.adobe.com)

5 points by ieatpaste 16 years ago | 7 comments

mdasen 16 years ago |

I hate to post something that seems trivial like this, but does it seem like bad form for Adobe to be snatching the "Catalyst" name given that there's already a Catalyst (http://www.catalystframework.org/)?

I know that in the open-source world, generally people don't care if you name your project off their's in a way that shows that you're doing a similar thing in a different project (think PHP on Trax or Groovy on Grails or the *Unit frameworks). However, Flash Catalyst isn't at all the same concept and it's confusing since the differentiation in name doesn't seem as significant. It sounds like there's Catalyst and some prefix it with "Flash" just like how some people say the "United States" and others might say "United States of America" - the "of America" doesn't denote a different entity.

Plus, Adobe already had a name that no one else seemed to be using: "Thermo". It's not a bad name either - instantly recognizable as a word with its Greek root.

I guess I don't see why Adobe couldn't go to Wikipedia's disambiguation page for Catalyst (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalyst_(disambiguation)) and see that there's already a Catalyst software product. Am I just making noise over nothing or did Adobe just grab another project's name?

radley 16 years ago | |

I doubt Adobe ever considered "snatching" the name. The Thermo team actually came up with the name (Flash Catalyst) themselves, persisted, and were very grateful when Adobe capitulated (unlike Apollo/AIR).

I can assure you most of us in the Flash community never heard of the "Catalyst Framework", so we'd never get to the next step of presuming that the word "catalyst" would be off the market.

The real controversy is "Flash Builder": http://flashbuilder.net/

mbeihoffer 16 years ago | | |

That's weird.

I use Flash, and I'm also aware of Perl's "Catalyst Framework", which I also, uh, use all the time. I mean, um, they are both, uh, software projects aimed at uh, what's the phrase I'm looking for here, oh yeah.

They are both software projects designed to leverage object-oriented best practices and innovative programming concepts in order to facilitate rapid applications development on the web.

So, er, no confusion at all, uh, right?

(I like how you claim ignorance on behalf of an entire "community", as if that's some kind of excuse.)

wmf 16 years ago | |

The convenient thing about being evil is that you don't have to check for things like this. You just do whatever you want.

mbeihoffer 16 years ago | |

I couldn't agree more. It seems like terribly bad form.

(That being said, well, I'm a very biased Perl/Catalyst developer.)

But I'm not surprised by this, much. I am forever resigned to the fact that open source projects in general (and in particular, the more "polite" open source projects such as Perl culture overall) generally do a haphazard job when it comes to branding their projects, and obviously fall flat on their faces most of the time when it comes to policing a trademark, or what-have-you.

It's not that the Perl/Catalyst people aren't <strong>smart</strong> enough to register Catalyst as a trademark; it's simply that doing so would be antithetical to the entire Perl culture. Plus, it costs, like, $400 or something to register a trademark, and what kind of open-source hippies have that kind of money just lying around anyway.

So, we're probably going to have to get used to the fact that Adobe is going to run rampant over the Catalyst Framework, as they are of course the 800-pound gorilla of design software. Not that I don't like Adobe, of course, some of their software is pretty nice to use. (Especially if you are provided the software through your job, and you don't have to think about the price tag.) (And before you bark at me, uh, yes, I do in fact use both the GIMP and InkScape on my "real" computer. I just think some Adobe products are nice an polished and useful and optimized.)

(Remember when Macromedia and Adobe sued and counter-sued each other over software patents? That was fun to watch. Also, when companies do that, uh, it's probably a good time to start thinking about who is going to buy whom.)

Anyway, so, yeah. I think that's really mean of Adobe. I don't know if it's evil, necessarily. Just ignorant and boorish of them. It's sort of like them admitting, "Uh, yeah, we're supposed to be the big-league company you think of when you hear the word "CREATIVITY", but, uh, well we couldn't think of anything even halfway original so we decided to steal a brand name from the Perl community."

(I actually have a couple friends who work for Adobe. Maybe I should ask them "Hey, guys, WTF is up with you stealing our WORD? I mean, it's OUR WORD. WE OWN IT."

Except that would also then make me feel like an idiot.

Still, I might do it anyhoo. I've always wanted to be a whiny open source "advocate".)

radley 16 years ago |

Flash Builder 4 is the new release name (not Flex Builder).

ieatpaste 16 years ago | |

Didn't want to confuse anyone.

fyi, here's a discussion on the name change http://joshblog.net/2009/05/16/adobe-announces-flex-builder-...