Adobe opens source code kimono

Would you Adam and Eve it?

Adobe lost many friends in the open source community four years ago when it decided to prosecute Russian developer Dmitri Sklyarov under the DMCA, for publishing details of how to circument eBook encryption.

But while it's a little late for an olive branch, the software giant's decision to release code under the OSI-compatible MIT license last week has been warmly received. Adam and Eve are two C++ libraries that Adobe uses extensively in its own products.

Both help with creating the user interface: the latter is a cross platform layout engine, the former a modelling description language which, according to co-author Sean Parent, "accounts for a third of Adobe's code base and nearly half of the bugs found during development...We realize the problem is far larger than us alone," he writes.

Both projects are compatible with the Boost effort to collect useful cross platform C++ code.

You can find out more here. ®

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