At a minimum, I wish Adobe would open-spec the file formats for Freehand and other back-catalog products (such as Extreme 3D); then at least filters could be developed so that users could access their legacy files in current programs.

Freehand is dead and has been for many, many years. (Many claim it’s been dead since version 8). It will never be open sourced. The codebase is antiquated and it’d be a dumb business move on Adobe’s part.

Cuttle...I agree, though I imagine they’ll keep that for themselves as a ’force the hand’ way to cross-grade companies to illustrator.

For a real open source alternative, there’s inkscape:

http://www.inkscape.org/

Has a long way to go, but is an impressive app.

(And thanks for the link to MNteractive!)

Freehand is and was a great program, but the funny little secret is out, Illustrator will never be good, so long as competition is non existant. You can take that to the bank.

The Truth shall set you free

Maybe we should do a font to raise money for the inkscape developers.

What, you mean Corel Draw isn’t competition for Illustrator?
;P

So long as they refuse to make a new Mac version it isn’t, among its other issues, but it looks similar enough to the general population, or me, at least.

Freehand will become antique artifact. Corel for the Mac worth just the fonts that come with it.

“Maybe we should do a font to raise money for the inkscape developers.”

I like that idea.