Live data from Hacker News

Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

ruffle.rs

41–50 of 94 posts

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#42
post #5

Those sample files.. bring back memories. I think we took a step backwards in serving vector art/animation on the web. When YouTube replaced Flash, we've probably wasted petabytes of bandwidth serving rasterized content when Flash or a similar format would have been much more effective.

SVG is much better at vector art use cases. Flash was horrible from user pov (constant os and browser compatibility problems, unending stream of weekly "ads can pwn your computer" level security holes, proprietary black box nature, ate your battery, hard to procedurally generate, didn't integrate with the web and dom, etc etc).

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#43
post #36

A FOSS Flash Player implementation has certainly value, and I hope to have contributed to the cause by starting the Lightspark project years ago. The sad reality is that the Flash runtime is massive and under-documented. The best approach for Flash preservation in the medium term is using _actual emulation_ to run the binary player itself. Further reading: https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content-with.…

So, to archive/preserve content that was lost because it relied on a proprietary closed-source technology we should be relying on _your_ proprietary closed-source technology? Please. I understand you're trying to make a living here, but being able to use F/LOSS software is absolutely critical for the preservation movement. “Not-for-profit, charitable and educational organisations can benefit from discounted rates.”.…

Hopefully charitable and educational organisations aren't just waiting for someone else to do the work for them for free. If they don't like this approach they can pay people to work on improving open source flash implementations.

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#44
post #40

A FOSS Flash Player implementation has certainly value, and I hope to have contributed to the cause by starting the Lightspark project years ago. The sad reality is that the Flash runtime is massive and under-documented. The best approach for Flash preservation in the medium term is using _actual emulation_ to run the binary player itself. Further reading: https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content-with.…

I see you over and over again in Flash Player threads. Your approach isn't good because it requires someone else's, namely Adobe's, cooperation, and even then, you still end up with a black box inside another black box. Doesn't feel sustainable.

Why does it require Adobe's cooperation?

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#45
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you over and over again in Flash Player threads. Your approach isn't good because it requires someone else's, namely Adobe's, cooperation, and even then, you still end up with a black box inside another black box. Doesn't feel sustainable.

Why does it require Adobe's cooperation?

[deleted]

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#46
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you over and over again in Flash Player threads. Your approach isn't good because it requires someone else's, namely Adobe's, cooperation, and even then, you still end up with a black box inside another black box. Doesn't feel sustainable.

Why does it require Adobe's cooperation?

Because he said so previously. There's some licensing stuff he's apparently very worried about.

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#47
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you over and over again in Flash Player threads. Your approach isn't good because it requires someone else's, namely Adobe's, cooperation, and even then, you still end up with a black box inside another black box. Doesn't feel sustainable.

Why does it require Adobe's cooperation?

> To use CheerpX for Flash, a licence is required for both CheerpX itself, and for distributing the Adobe Flash Player. This is a requirement for both self-hosted and cloud-hosted installations. In many cases, we will be able to offer both licences under the same commercial agreement. In some cases, a separate licence will need to be procured from Harman. Leaning Technologies can make the right introductions and facilitate the conversation with Harman.

https://medium.com/leaningtech/cheerpx-for-flash-now-general...

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#49
I really really wish Flash MX 2004 were made free to download by Adobe. That was one of the greatest piece of software they (well Macromedia) ever released. The format is dead, basically abandonware, they should make it available.

Adobe already released the universal activation keys cause they shutdown the servers but it's still not legal to use if you haven't bought an original copy https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/macromedi...

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#50
post #42
post #5

Those sample files.. bring back memories. I think we took a step backwards in serving vector art/animation on the web. When YouTube replaced Flash, we've probably wasted petabytes of bandwidth serving rasterized content when Flash or a similar format would have been much more effective.

SVG is much better at vector art use cases. Flash was horrible from user pov (constant os and browser compatibility problems, unending stream of weekly "ads can pwn your computer" level security holes, proprietary black box nature, ate your battery, hard to procedurally generate, didn't integrate with the web and dom, etc etc).

All true, but there’s such a massive library of content for Flash that they must have done _something_ right. Maybe it was just luck, maybe timing, but it’s amazing to me that so many games and videos are caught in this particular technical dead end. My understanding is that HTML5 just never offered the same primitives for content creation, but I’m unsure why there was no economic incentive to create them.
Post reply on HN