Kevin Lynch CTO is joining Apple, and will report to Bob Mansfield as VP of technology. Before his stint at Adobe, Lynch was a major force at Macromedia (much like Apple SVP Phil Schiller, originally Macromedia’s VP of product marketing), working on software and product development. According to John Gruber at Daring Fireball (in claws out ‘meow’ mode), though, Lynch is a “bozo, a bad hire“. As if that wasn’t enough, Gruber then follows up with a second rowr, stating:

I get that the guy worked for Adobe and had to play for the home team, but as CTO he backed a dying technology for years too long. In 2007 when the iPhone shipped Flash-free, that was one thing. But for Adobe to still be backing the Flash horse in 2010 when the iPad came out — they just looked silly.

You play the cards you have. Adobe’s hand at the time wasn’t great, and it included lots of cards that said “Flash” in massive letters. That Adobe initially banked on Flash made sense, on the basis that while it wasn’t obviously suited for mobile, it did play into the ‘works everywhere’ ethos that underpinned the web. The company was presumably hoping Apple’s lead could be clawed back by Flash-armed competitors, and that Flash itself could improve rapidly on mobile. That obviously didn’t happen.

In 2010, Adobe was still banging the Flash drum, but again you play the cards you hold. Around that time, judging by subsequent releases of its software, Flash’s pivot must have been very much in progress by that point, with Adobe planning to reposition the product as a tool for app development and high-end online multimedia experiences, rather than it continuing as a ‘default’ component of the web. I imagine around the same time, Adobe’s Edge suite (several small apps for working with web standards) must have also been in the planning stages. But software and products do not happen overnight, and so you play your hand until you have something that competes in a specific sector, in largely the same way Apple dismissed small tablets until the second it unveiled the iPad mini.

Lynch wasn’t just an employee pushing the company line. As CTO, he was the guy who defined the company line — and his line had Adobe still pushing for Flash on mobile devices over three years after the iPhone shipped.

As CTO, he was presumably also the guy who defined the company’s rather rapid shift towards web standards, who at the very least okayed the savvy purchase of Typekit, and who, as noted, managed against the odds to keep Flash relevant, albeit to a smaller market.

That’s not to say I’m some kind of pro-Adobe drone. Edge remains flawed, some Adobe products are bloated, and the company’s repeated fumbling of Fireworks as a UI design tool is both baffling and depressing. (Top hint if you’re on OS X—use Sketch instead.) But branding Lynch a “bozo” purely on the basis of his advocacy for his company’s core technology—even after that technology had passed its best—makes little sense; what Lynch did doesn’t strike me as a bozo move, merely one rooted in reality while changes were made behind the scenes. As Ian Betteridge (who’s actually met Lynch) eloquently put it on Twitter earlier:

“That big product we make a lot of money from? Dead.” No exec, ever.