> The half of Adobe you posit getting sacked wouldn't say it was worth it, though, and from a certain perspective -- namely, their own -- they'd be right.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough that I'm expressing my own perspective by which expanding of scientific, technological and creative capacity of humankind is priority over almost everything apart from preventable loss of life.

> effect of his actions is to critically imperil those people's ability to maintain themselves, their families, and the position in life to which all of same have grown accustomed.
(This might seem to you like a mild inconvenience. If so, I can only assume either that you're not getting paid well, or that you're only so recently getting paid well that you've yet to accustom yourself to it, and in either case that you're also not carrying a meaningful amount of debt. Hell, I'm not paid all that well, and I carry less debt than anyone I know, and I can assure you that my recent layoff was nonetheless far more than a "mild inconvenience".)

If you are interested from where I come from I'm getting paid well only recently. If by "accustoming myself to it" you mean borrowing shitload of money on account of my future anticipated income, then yes I haven't accustomed to my high pay, neither I'm intending to.

It helps that I'm not a fan of cars, houses and social status.

I know that for some people it is a life struggle to find and keep jobs. But most of people involved in software development are not that people and if they make it a struggle it is by their own choice. Even though they are paid more than few times than the amount other people can live comfortably off of, they manage to pile up debt so high that earning a living becomes their life struggle as well. Some even draw perverse sense of nobility and meaning from it. They can now see themselves hardworking breadwinners even though staying afloat would not be any concern if they just hadn't put themselves in such a financial conditions by living above their means.

Why am I calling software development employee being sacked a "mild inconvenience"? If you wan't me to explain from personal angle I'd say that decade of freelancing and bootstraping companies without much success but also without dire failures that would have left me indebted ensure me that my sense of financial safety as a software developer is in no way associated with having a job. I know for a fact that I can live off of 20% of what I'm earning now for many years. To keep himself afloat software developer needs a computer and ability to communicate with it and with people who want to make a computer do things they themselves don't know how to force it to do. Job is a nice thing but optional.

I'll give you that not being American helps massively with financial safety. No one required from me to put myself deep in debt to educate myself. No one required from me to put myself in debt when I or a person close to me experiences medical emergency. No one requires me to pay rent to landlords of San Francisco or to greedy US financial sector in form of mortgage. What astonishes me is that so little people exercise their ability to stop being Americans. I know it's hard and they'll try to rip you off one last time on exit but still...

> After all, Photoshop is already the unquestioned leader in its field, and the closest competitor isn't even within shouting distance

IMHO closest competitor to Adobe Photoshop is Adobe Fireworks, but since it's no longer Macromedia Fireworks it will stay out of even shouting distance forever. Same goes for every other contenders since we allow leaders to just buy contenders. And as for opensource alternatives there won't be any until better tooling will draw more competent ux and visually talented people to opensource software development.

> so what good does it really do Adobe's business if Creative Cloud's Photoshop component sucks 20% less?

I'm even less concerned about Adobe's shareholders mild inconveniences than about Adobe's workers mild inconveniences. Making Photoshop users jobs they do suck 20% less would be huge and for me would outweigh even total collapse of Adobe.