Here are a couple messages from people who were on the OS/2 FrameMaker development team. As you can see, they weren't happy about FrameMaker being cancelled.

Firstly don't kill the messenger, there is nobody madder about this than I am.

As for the reason. Now that Frame is part of Adobe future releases of FrameMaker will be based on Adobe core technology, the same core technology behind Photoshop, PageMaker etc. Adobe do not want to have to port that core technology to OS/2 and therefore could not continue to develop and enhance the OS/2 version of FrameMaker past 6.0, so the decision was made to cancel FrameMaker 5.1 for OS/2. On the surface at least that makes some sense, until that is you realize that much of this core technology has already been ported to OS/2 as part of the Acrobat project, (which continues by the way). So either this was just a convenient excuse or senior Adobe managers were complete unaware that this work had already taken place. Unfortunately this last scenario is all to believable to anyone who works here.

All of us on the development team are to say the least very unhappy about this decision and have been petitioning management all the way up to Geschke and Warnock to get it reversed. However I suspect that now Adobe has gone public with the decision they consider it over with.

Officially all comments or questions concerning FrameMaker for OS/2 should be addressed to:

Martin Doettling Marketing Director
Frame Products Adobe Systems Inc.
333 West San Carlos Street
San Jose, CA 95110
408-975-6141
408-975-6600 (Fax)
e-mail: mxd@adobe.com

Martin - SF, CA via GCP (mwarnett@adobe.com)

As a (former) developer on the product, and a soon to be former employee of Adobe, I feel the need to comment. The other developers and I were extremely angered and frustrated by this decision. We had spent about a year developing the product, were days away from beta, and 6-8 weeks from product release. Adobe just threw it all away. We sent a letter to every important decision maker at Adobe expressing our concern. We were asked to "support their decision". None of their "reasons" for the decision made sense to us either. I personally believe it was purely political. The odd thing is (well one of the many odd things), they still plan to come out with Acrobat for OS/2! Of course that could all change when Acrobat is days away from beta. This is one resource that is NOT going to be working on the Win95 version.

Ed Hovorka (HOVOEDW@minna.acc.iit.edu)