Adobe Responds to Apple's Anti-Flash Stance With Comments on Openness, Ad Campaign

Adobe today went on the offensive regarding the controversy over its Flash platform, pressing its support for openness on the Internet and responding to some of the comments made by others about the platform in recent weeks that it believes are incorrect.

We believe open markets that allow developers, publishers, and consumers to make their own choices about how they create, distribute, and access content are essential to progress. That's why we actively support technologies like HTML4, HTML5, CSS, and H.264, in addition to our own technologies.

Adobe has also published an open letter from founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock noting the company's history of publishing open specifications for its standards and arguing that it has attained its dominant market position by out-innovating competitors.

We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web -- the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.

In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the World Wide Web? And we believe the answer is: nobody -- and everybody, but certainly not a single company.

As noted by Engadget, Adobe has also rolled out an advertising campaign in online and print media taking the angle that Adobe loves Apple, but doesn't love its choice to restrict how users can develop and experience Internet content on its devices.