Really? That's changed then. When Macromedia first took over Flash and launched Flash 3 they released the specifications of SWF as an open source format. A number of companies including Adobe quickly released their own competing software that supported the format but never managed to match it. The positive effect was that a lot of creative software does now support exporting projects to swf format. I find this most useful with Illustrator and 3DSMax as I can output files created in those packages and then load them directly into Flash. Although I do tend to export from 3DSMax as illustrator files more as it retains more information.

Maybe this changed when Adobe took over the company. They have never been one to like sharing.