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Petition to open source Flash

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Re: Petition to open source Flash

#231

Post by simion314 »

notacoward wrote: post #226
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that Chrome, Firefox, and Edge (at least) have all stated that they will drop support for flash as soon as it's EOL'd. So why again would open sourcing Flash after that point make a difference in your security? Only thing you can argue is that if someone is using old out of date software they would be at risk, but they are already at risk. Open sourcing Flash would not make it any less secure if it's not…

Do you suppose that nobody will use the open-source version of Flash to make a spin of Chromium with Flash support, to serve the very kind of people who just can't seem to live without their legacy apps? If the browsers are open source and Flash is open source, millions of systems will be left vulnerable in this way.

So you don't want some code to be open source because you care about some tech people may used that open source code and get infected? Java was open sourced and you don't have an open source Java plugin forced upon you.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#232

Post by simion314 »

mnem wrote: post #230
simion314 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not start a new project in Flex/AIR but I am stil bug fixing existing projects. I use Intelli IDEA, I do not need the drag and drop GUI editor I learned how to make good layouts editing the XML and it is much more simpler to layout components using Flex(or other GUI toolkits , I used Qt and WPF ) then using divs and css(thought he new flexbox in css improved the situation), So in Flex(Qt,and others) you have…

I tend to use the native UI for each platform I work on. My general opinion of cross platform UI frameworks these days is that they for developer convenience - they don't help the users. However I'm also aware that persuading the budget holder that users are worth spending money on is hard :) For the drop downs - when I used Flex I had the same issues over window bounds, in that nothing could extend beyond the limits…

You can extend over window bounds, what I meant is the dropdown should open up or give you a property to allow you this option, also Flex dropdowns had the property you can set how many items are visible at a time. I learned Adobe AIR because my employer liked it better then Qt at that time and he also trusted Adobe products, moving from c++/Qt (and previous C# Winforms and WPF) to AIR was a downgrade in some aspects but after you learn it you can do your job and implement most of the things fast. What do you use for creating native apps for Windows, I do not know what is the prefered thing this days?

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#234

Post by notacoward »

simion314 wrote: post #231
notacoward wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you suppose that nobody will use the open-source version of Flash to make a spin of Chromium with Flash support, to serve the very kind of people who just can't seem to live without their legacy apps? If the browsers are open source and Flash is open source, millions of systems will be left vulnerable in this way.

So you don't want some code to be open source because you care about some tech people may used that open source code and get infected? Java was open sourced and you don't have an open source Java plugin forced upon you.

Yes, I do, quite often.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#236

Post by nextlevelwizard »

notacoward wrote: post #226
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that Chrome, Firefox, and Edge (at least) have all stated that they will drop support for flash as soon as it's EOL'd. So why again would open sourcing Flash after that point make a difference in your security? Only thing you can argue is that if someone is using old out of date software they would be at risk, but they are already at risk. Open sourcing Flash would not make it any less secure if it's not…

Do you suppose that nobody will use the open-source version of Flash to make a spin of Chromium with Flash support, to serve the very kind of people who just can't seem to live without their legacy apps? If the browsers are open source and Flash is open source, millions of systems will be left vulnerable in this way.

What is preventing them bundling the old out of date Flash with Chromium?

Why even bother worrying about Chromium? People who are going to want the legacy Flash stuff are running Windows and there isn't even Windows build of Chromium. How come people on HN always come up with some ridiculous edge case that has zero baring on reality.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#237

Post by chickenfries »

karmaProtector wrote: post #210
chickenfries wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I can't believe the number of people in this thread suggesting that keeping it closed is somehow the right thing to do?

Well, its pretty simple. Why should people be against open-sourcing it? I think 90% of those who are against it, are against it, because they want to forget flash and never see it again. So somehow, they must have made so bad experiences with flash, that they do not want to get it for free or even someone else to get it. So you next question is probably: What could have been such a bad experience? Probably not a just…

You won't have to use Flash. Browsers are dropping support for Flash. Its for the sake of archiving and learning about its code base. Just because its open sourced doesnt mean the web is going to return to 2001.

Think about it this way: as a linux user, wouldnt it be a great thing for humanity if Windows XP was open sourced? You wouldnt have to use it. No one would have to use it. But that knowledge and history would be unlocked instead of hidden away. Someone in the future would be able to learn from it or modify it to get a really old obscure program to run. The possibilities are endless.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#238

Post by kerkeslager »

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…

Wasn't this basically what people said about Netscape pre-Firefox? That worked out, and ushered in a new age of Internet.

Flash has an immense amount of value built in which cannot be replaced by any of the alternatives. Maintaining and fixing old code isn't as sexy as jumping on the latest competing standard, but it's far more valuable.

Even if we don't continue to develop new features for Flash, it's important to keep it alive so we don't lose the ability to run the wide variety of flash programs which at this point make up a significant portion of Internet culture and history.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#239

Post by jacquesm »

notacoward wrote: post #228
jacquesm wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it would still leave the other players competing with Adobe's own. You have that backwards. The effort going into open source projects emulating a closed source product are wasted if that closed source project can be open sourced. That's a win for everybody, after that the effort can be directed to something more important because perfection is now attainable. The only reason these open source projects exist in…

> The effort going into open source projects emulating a closed source product are wasted if that closed source project can be open sourced. Yeah, that Linux thing just died when Solaris was open-sourced. Even more relevantly, IE and Chrome. > perfection is now attainable. That's cute. As somebody who has actually produced software for thirty years (but without ever hitching my wagon to Flash like some here) I'm a bi…

> Yeah, that Linux thing just died when Solaris was open-sourced.

I fail to see the relevance. Linux never tried to be an 'open source Solaris clone' and of course it didn't die off, in fact, it flourished, which sort of undermines your argument.

> Even more relevantly, IE and Chrome.

What of them? I could see Mozilla vs IE.

> As somebody who has actually produced software for thirty years

Appeal to authority ;)

> but without ever hitching my wagon to Flash like some here

Join the club. I absolutely hated Flash and for many years resisted using it to deliver video.

> I'm a bit more skeptical about the likelihood of taking a gigantic long-lived ball of mud and making it perfect.

Perfect as in 'perfect emulation', not perfect as in perfect all across the board. Having the Flash source would allow the open source implementations to look at how things were done so they can emulate all behavior up to and including the bugs. If Adobe would open source it then they would not have to avoid looking at even disassemblies of the Flash code.

> In particular, security is hard to bolt on after the fact.

This is not about future developments in Flash, it is about digital archeology. If you start seeing it through that lens then maybe you will be a bit more relaxed about it.

Nobody is suggesting that Flash be given eternal life or that we will have another round of Flash content if Flash is open sourced. The sooner it is gone from the web the better. But that old stuff still remains and maybe one day someone wants to review it. That is what this is about. CF people using C64 Roms or Nintendo stuff 3 decades old.

> I certainly wouldn't assume that the maintainers of other implementations would be overjoyed by the prospect.

Did you ask them?

> Just look at how many reimplementations there are of things that were already open source.

So what? Fragmentation is the very power of open source at work.

> I'd say it's unlikely that a significant number of people will work on Flash without being paid to do so.

Exactly. So that is - again - why open sourcing the old Flash player is a good thing.

Re: Petition to open source Flash

#240

Post by rachkovsky »

ransom1538 wrote: post #90

Again. From my game dev days, the people that really lose (over and over) are the artists . Millions of hours have been sunk into laying out vector graphics with the Flash IDE. Code I understand should eventually be tossed away, but, not art . I guess staring at millions of beautiful vector timelined illustrations changed my opinion - but it is art to me. And like books, I think its a sin to toss. I hope the artists…

Code is art too.
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