This title seems misleading (and doesn't match the one currently on techcrunch). Adobe acquired Nitobi, the makers of PhoneGap. PhoneGap itself seems to have been "donated" to the Apache foundation.
Adobe is acquiring Nitobi. PhoneGap (the project) is being submitted for acceptance as an Apache Software Foundation project: Here's the Google Groups discussion:
With the death of Flash, for front-end web development, likely right around the corner this is a great strategic move by Adobe to stay relevant.
Maybe they'll create an XCode like tool for HTML5 using PhoneGap as the glue. With the acquisition of TypeKit it really looks like that's the direction they are heading in. Would be an interesting and useful product.
This is cool. Thanks to the Day Software acquisition a while back, Adobe has quite a bit of things done on the open via Apache Software Foundation. JackRabbit, Tika, and now PhoneGap.
It also signals they're taking the web standards more seriously (PhoneGap mostly tracks the W3C Device API specs)
Looks like a great talent acquisition. PhoneGap is a temporary (albeit, dragging on for years) solution. How long before the browsers adopt a common interface for mobile capabilities that will render phonegap obsolete...
well I'd look at the community building around PhoneGap Plugins for your answer there. I do agree that many of the standard APIs (which we lead/follow W3C on) will be in most mobile browsers in the coming years.
EDIT: fixed stupid brain fart.