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A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

thechromesource.com

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Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#11

Post by bporterfield »

What almost everyone fails to realize is that Flash is already as open as it possibly can be. The SWF file specification and the player virtual machine are open and completely described here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

The only thing that keeps Adobe from completely open-sourcing their own player is codec licenses, not Adobe's stubbornness. Adobe pays a lot of money to license codecs that are closed (like h.264) and therefore have to protect those interests within their player. If there were a common open standard for video/audio, this would be a possibility.

(edit) http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail...

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#12

Post by poppysan »

benologist wrote: post #9
steveklabnik wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of time for them to improve this year. But since it's taken 3 years to get into beta, I'm not very confident that rapid improvement will be happening.

Right, but that's cause Adobe sucks at building software. But they do have the ability to deploy updates that actually reach consumers in a timely fashion, massively faster than any W3 spec or browser vendor can even dream of pushing something through. Everything Adobe, Microsoft, Unity etc push to their own platforms between HTML5 and HTML6 is stuff that HTML5 doesn't have and can't include until the next release be…

Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign... all industry-leading software packages. They cant be too bad...

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#13

Post by albertzeyer »

benologist wrote: post #7
albertzeyer wrote: post #3

In principle a good idea (or just a logic step). It's kind of stupid that they haven't done that a long time ago already. It would have solved any performance, arch support, security or whatever problems and also the whole debate about openness. It would have changed the view on Adobe/Flash a lot for many people. Although, if it happens now, I'm not really sure what Flash can offer over HTML5. They are both almost eq…

Flash/Silverlight/etc are very agile, it's May now and there's still plenty of time for any of them to roll out significant new features this year while browser vendors and the W3 debate which video format to use and consumers click ignore on the update your browser screen for the 1000th time.

Just curious: What significant features could that be?

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#14

Post by mcgyver »

keltex wrote: post #5

It's the logical thing for Adobe to do. Jobs is complaining about the proprietary platform, performance issues and all that. Now it time to turn it around. Adobe will still sell all their tools, they'll still have legions of flash programmers, they'll run on every mobile device except the iPhone. What's so important about keeping the flash engine closed source?

Open sourcing Flash would definitely be in Adobe's best interests. The only possible thing holding them back is shoddy coding practices (using security-through-obscurity) which would result in more exploits and the Flash player gaining an even worse reputation.

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#15

Post by kierank »

bporterfield wrote: post #11

What almost everyone fails to realize is that Flash is already as open as it possibly can be. The SWF file specification and the player virtual machine are open and completely described here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ The only thing that keeps Adobe from completely open-sourcing their own player is codec licenses, not Adobe's stubbornness. Adobe pays a lot of money to license codecs that are closed (like h.264…

The only thing that keeps Adobe from completely open-sourcing their own player is codec licenses,

Also an embarassingly awful codebase.

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#16

Post by olalonde »

I would like to see Adobe contribute to the HTML5 specs and "merge" the good features of Flash with HTML5. I don't think it makes sense anymore to have both HTML5 and Flash as two separate entities as they basically aim to solve the same problem. Adobe could then build great authoring tools for web apps just like it did for Flash... if only they could see the opportunity.

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#17

Post by benologist »

albertzeyer wrote: post #13
benologist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash/Silverlight/etc are very agile, it's May now and there's still plenty of time for any of them to roll out significant new features this year while browser vendors and the W3 debate which video format to use and consumers click ignore on the update your browser screen for the 1000th time.

Just curious: What significant features could that be?

It doesn't really matter what it is, Adobe can get x to consumers years ahead of the W3 and browser vendors.

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#18

Post by benologist »

poppysan wrote: post #12
benologist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but that's cause Adobe sucks at building software. But they do have the ability to deploy updates that actually reach consumers in a timely fashion, massively faster than any W3 spec or browser vendor can even dream of pushing something through. Everything Adobe, Microsoft, Unity etc push to their own platforms between HTML5 and HTML6 is stuff that HTML5 doesn't have and can't include until the next release be…

Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign... all industry-leading software packages. They cant be too bad...

Industry leading is not the same as perfect. They get a lot of stuff right, they make some fantastic innovations, I love AS3 and make most of my income from building games in Flash.

But if you use Adobe software you'll nod your head at a lot of stuff here: http://dearadobe.com/top_rated.php

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#19

Post by papachito »

bporterfield wrote: post #11

What almost everyone fails to realize is that Flash is already as open as it possibly can be. The SWF file specification and the player virtual machine are open and completely described here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ The only thing that keeps Adobe from completely open-sourcing their own player is codec licenses, not Adobe's stubbornness. Adobe pays a lot of money to license codecs that are closed (like h.264…

The codec excuse is kind of bogus. Chromium itself comes with a separate package that contain patented codecs. Adobe could easily break down the code into separate parts, the whole open source part and a small codec package containing the patented parts. Of course it should also offer one full package for general use like Google does with Chrome Vs Chromium+ffmpeg-nonfree-codecs.

Re: A Letter to Adobe Flash: At Least Consider Open Source

#20

Post by est »

papachito wrote: post #19
bporterfield wrote: post #11

What almost everyone fails to realize is that Flash is already as open as it possibly can be. The SWF file specification and the player virtual machine are open and completely described here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ The only thing that keeps Adobe from completely open-sourcing their own player is codec licenses, not Adobe's stubbornness. Adobe pays a lot of money to license codecs that are closed (like h.264…

The codec excuse is kind of bogus. Chromium itself comes with a separate package that contain patented codecs. Adobe could easily break down the code into separate parts, the whole open source part and a small codec package containing the patented parts. Of course it should also offer one full package for general use like Google does with Chrome Vs Chromium+ffmpeg-nonfree-codecs.

exactly, why not leave H.264/nellymose/whatever module as a stub in the code, then open source the rest. I am pretty sure a third party custom build can come up with using alternative technologies.

But I doubt they are willing to open source their pixel blender in Flash 10 though.

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