Macromedia FreeHand

Macromedia FreeHand was a vector graphics editor that was created by Altsys Corporation, licensed to Aldus, and acquired by Macromedia, which itself was acquired by Adobe in December 2005.

Product history
FreeHand was originally developed by Altsys from Fontographer's graphics engine as Masterpiece, which was licensed to Aldus in the fall of 1987. The program was released as Aldus FreeHand 1.0, with Altsys retaining development rights. Aldus (not Altsys) was absorbed by Adobe Systems in a merger that was completed on August 31, 1994. Altsys sued to regain marketing rights to FreeHand, citing a non-compete clause because of Adobe's development of Adobe Illustrator. Altsys also filed for the trademark to Altsys FreeHand in July 1994 in event they needed to self-publish the product.

Acquisition by Macromedia
Altsys was acquired by Macromedia in January 1995. The original development team in was renamed the Digital Arts Group and continued development of the program as Macromedia FreeHand. The engineers also created Macromedia Fireworks and the two software projects often shared resources.

Acquisition by Adobe and discontinuation
In 2003, the Texas development staff were laid off or relocated to Macromedia's main office in San Francisco, California. Prior to that, the team rushed to add many new features to Macromedia FreeHand MX with the expectation that it might be the last version that they would ever work on.

After the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe in 2005, Macromedia FreeHand MX became Adobe FreeHand 11 without any new major updates, with version 11.0.2 being the final release. Migration guides and upgrades to Adobe Illustrator CS3 were offered to existing users. Adobe's support for FreeHand ended on August 1, 2011.