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Petition to open source Flash

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Re: Petition to open source Flash

#41

Post by soylentcola »

djhworld wrote: post #24
notacoward wrote: post #19

No no no no NO. It's time to get rid of Flash. Open-sourcing will make it live forever. Flash has very little to offer that is not at this point duplicated (or improved upon) by others. It's also woefully insecure. "Many eyes make all bugs shallow" will only work for the most trivial bugs in the most common code paths. Plenty of vulnerabilities will remain. In open source, they'll be even easier for attackers to find…

Even if it's not going to be in browsers, I wonder if there's value in open sourcing it so people can create applications that run flash apps. There's a lot of content out there made with flash, especially games.

Is there still a standalone Flash player? (or at least, will the debug version work?) Haven't messed with Flash stuff in over a decade but I remember having a standalone player to play downloaded SWF files back in the day. No idea if there's anything roughly equivalent out there in its current incarnation.

A sandboxed player application would go a long way toward the uses mentioned in this thread, no? I wonder when we'll start seeing Flash emulators being developed to play back all that old content.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#42

Post by yuhong »

nkkollaw wrote: post #18
tbodt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one is everyone going to install: an open source flash player that's not quite compatible, or the adobe one that's perfectly compatible?

The one that isn't abandoned, which in 2020 will be the open source one. Again, I don't see why if there's interest in Flash and Adobe is abandoning its player, the open source ones can't be made to work as well (or as bad) as Adobe's. Firefox copied IE's quirks back in the day, I don't see why it can't be done again.

Flash is more complex than HTML/CSS/JS though.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#43

Post by nkkollaw »

btown wrote: post #23
nkkollaw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if anyone is really interested in Flash and Adobe's player is reaching EOL, whatever open source project gets to be used as its substitute will become the standard, and no one will care about compatibility with Adobe's Flash player, since no one will have it installed.

This ignores all legacy Flash applications, which were designed for the original player (bugs and all). These are the legacy that need to be preserved. Presumably (though I'd love to see counterexamples) most people using Adobe Animate CC (the latest version and rebrand of Flash) these days are targeting HTML5 anyways.

Ah, I see.

Then I guess the bugs can be taken into account like Firefox did with IE6?

Perhaps having a compatibility-mode on/off so that new movies could follow the standard.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#45

Post by gburt »

xilni wrote: post #6

Dear god no, please just let it die, I don't care about Badger, Badger, snake or Flash hentai flash game nostalgia that much.

This is a really short-sighted perspective. Letting Flash die would be a serious contributor to bit rot. Archival of all the historical content created in Flash is a respectable goal even if we should _never use Flash again for anything new_.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#46

Post by gburt »

notacoward wrote: post #19

No no no no NO. It's time to get rid of Flash. Open-sourcing will make it live forever. Flash has very little to offer that is not at this point duplicated (or improved upon) by others. It's also woefully insecure. "Many eyes make all bugs shallow" will only work for the most trivial bugs in the most common code paths. Plenty of vulnerabilities will remain. In open source, they'll be even easier for attackers to find…

Preservation and reduction of bit rot is a great reason to open source Flash or ensure there is always a definitive version available, even if all the browsers should ban it because it is a messy, unperformant security liability.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

soylentcola wrote: post #41
djhworld wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's not going to be in browsers, I wonder if there's value in open sourcing it so people can create applications that run flash apps. There's a lot of content out there made with flash, especially games.

Is there still a standalone Flash player? (or at least, will the debug version work?) Haven't messed with Flash stuff in over a decade but I remember having a standalone player to play downloaded SWF files back in the day. No idea if there's anything roughly equivalent out there in its current incarnation. A sandboxed player application would go a long way toward the uses mentioned in this thread, no? I wonder when w…

> I wonder when we'll start seeing Flash emulators being developed to play back all that old content.

http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#48

Post by [deleted] »

melling wrote: post #37
hk__2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten of thousands of games are created every year.

I'm hoping enough people flag this story so it's removed from the front page, and we can get back to more important stories. BTW, don't bother debating this because you'll simply be downvoted for a different opinion. Flag it off the front page and save your karma. It's time for Flash users to learn the having the web based off of closed source Adobe Flash really does have its downsides. They didn't seem to get it 10…

[deleted]

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#49

Post by nkkollaw »

StevePerkins wrote: post #44
nkkollaw wrote: post #2

Why not contribute to well-established open source Flash players? http://lightspark.github.io/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

Because they're all alpha-level, and will probably always be to Flash what ReactOS is to Windows.

Perhaps, but let's say Windows is gone tomorrow: wouldn't React OS gain a lot of traction given all the software for Windows, and perhaps get a spike of volunteers?

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#50

Post by StevePerkins »

hk__2 wrote: post #30
wildbunny wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very narrow minded. Tens of thousands of games rely on flash, along with many movies and general history of the internet. Open souring it will preserve countless hours of lost work.

Ten of thousands of games are created every year.

Tens of thousands of books are written each year. Tens of thousands of songs are recorded each year. Etc. This is an absurd line of reasoning.

People get permission to build Commodore 64 clones, for retro computing preservation, and Hacker News says that's great. Someone requests similar permission for Flash, and now we're upset about the notion of a proprietary codebase being open sourced? Why? Because Steve Jobs said it wasn't cool? Because you're seriously afraid that it would make a comeback, and dethrone HTML5 on the mainstream web?

Guys, someone started a petition to ask a company to donate a propriety codebase after EOL. That's all. This is just idle chat, because nothing in Adobe's history suggests that they would actually consider this.

Regardless, if you would rather NOT see a historically signficant codebase open sourced, then simply don't sign the petition. And take all the low-quality jokes and guffaws back to Reddit, please.

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