Re: Shooting themselves in the foot to save their hand
There is the 800kg gorilla in the mists - Illustrator - and, rather than attempt to duplicate the workflow to the best of their ability in order to ease adoption...no.
I agree with your underlying point, but I feel the need to say in boldface that I really dislike Illustrator.
I'm a tech writer. My job is to learn complicated software and then describe it to others, both procedurally and conceptually. Over the years I've used many, many text editors, word processors, photo and vector editors, page layout programs, etc.
I use PhotoShop daily, but InDesign and Illustrator only occasionally. I can fire up InDesign after not using it for months and at least get something done with minimal fuss. Ditto for FrameMaker.
When I try to do something in Illustrator after a few weeks hiatus, though, I'm completely baffled by it...every damn time. That UI has never made sense to me, so I struggle to relate its quirky tool behaviors and editing actions to the underlying concepts. Honestly, I would rather use Visio (gasp!).
I will be trying Inkscape again very soon. Being different from Illustrator is a feature, not a bug. IMHO