Adobe’s official statement about KIllustrator

– by Tina Gasperson –
KIllustrator, the Open Source counterpart to Adobe Inc.’s widely popular Illustrator program, has been under fire recently, ever since rumors of threats from Adobe lawyers circulated on the ‘Net. NewsForge has obtained a short official statement from Adobe concerning the conflict.NewsForge made many attempts to contact Adobe when the news first broke that Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler, owner of KIllustrator, was shutting the project down because of a darkly worded missive from Adobe headquarters. According to early reports, some demand for monetary compensation was made, and Sattler believed that Adobe wanted no less than the death of KIllustrator as penance for Sattler’s alleged trademark violation.

While NewsForge had no reason to disbelieve any reports coming from German sites with connections to Sattler and KIllustrator, we felt it was important to get confirmation from the source of the controversy. Late last week, we were finally able to speak with an Adobe representative, who in turn contacted company higher-ups and got her hands on an official statement from the makers of the Illustrator software:

"Adobe's primary interest in this issue is to protect its trademark rights
and goodwill associated with its Illustrator product. Adobe has no
intention of requiring Dr. Sattler to cease distribution of his product or
pay Adobe any fees, only to change the name of his software. Unfortunately,
the matter was not handled the way Adobe intended. We have contacted Dr.
Sattler and are committed to working out an amicable solution to this
matter."

It appears that Adobe is not a kissing cousin to some other proprietary behemoths, but is simply attempting to protect its trademark.

Earlier today, a reader sent us an email from the kdeve list saying that KIllustrator had changed its name to Kontour.