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Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

blogs.adobe.com

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Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

#11

Post by pavs »

swombat wrote: post #8
pavs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you _mean_ by "resolving"? You want adobe to buy H.264 and give it away for free? That's pretty much impossible. You can't just throw around the word "resolve" things without understanding the complexity or nature of the possible solutions.

I mean "do 'stuff' that makes the problem 'go away'". As a former management consultant, and now a start-up founder, believe me, I speak from experience when I say every problem of this kind is solvable if you want to do it badly enough.

There is only "one stuff" they can do to make the problem go away (in your words "resolving licensing issues"), which is, they can buy H.264 and give it away for free (open source it), which is impossible without making themselves bankrupt.

The other stuff that I can think of is that they can use Ogg Theora, which is hardly a solution, considering (IMO) it is an inferior codec.

Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

#12

Post by jwr »

pavs wrote: post #3
swombat wrote: post #2

For what it's worth, I think Adobe has two paths in front of it: 1) Resolve the licensing issue and transfer ownership of the Flash player code to the community, and do that quickly . This, with plenty of cooperation with the community, could mean that Flash development is taken over by the community, and it may even be integrated into HTML5 in some way. 2) Rebuild their culture to be competitive. Reported, documente…

What do you mean by "Resolve the licensing issue"? They don't own H.264, how do you want them to "resolve" something they don't own?

It always annoys me when people talk about "stuff" without thinking for a moment what the "stuff" actually is.

What do you mean by "they don't own H.264"? What does "H.264" mean in your sentence? H.264 is a standard that defines how to decode an elementary video stream. You can't "own it". You can own rights to an implementation — but that's where things get interesting.

There are many H.264 decoders, some of which are open source and could be used by Adobe. So their argument is rather weak.

Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

#13

Post by pvg »

swombat wrote: post #2

For what it's worth, I think Adobe has two paths in front of it: 1) Resolve the licensing issue and transfer ownership of the Flash player code to the community, and do that quickly . This, with plenty of cooperation with the community, could mean that Flash development is taken over by the community, and it may even be integrated into HTML5 in some way. 2) Rebuild their culture to be competitive. Reported, documente…

Hang on, rebuild their culture to be competitive? Whatever the merits of Flash, it competes in the open market with HTML 5, SVG, Silverlight, Java [FX], you name it. Having somebody decide for you what you can and you can't run on your own device seems a lot more anti-competitive.

Flash has tremendous market penetration and is in very wide use. On the strength of that, I don't think Adobe's choices are constrained just to what bloggers, HN posters or even Steve Jobs say.

I'm not a great fan myself (other than when sinking hours into the latest Tower Defense game), FlashBlock is among the first things I download on a fresh install of Firefox but the notion that Flash is somehow teetering on the precipice of oblivion is fanciful, to put it very mildly.

Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

#14

Post by ZeroGravitas »

That's not a list of reasons, it's just repeating the standard Adobe talking points (which from the manner and number of times they do it must be a corporate policy of some sort).

What does he say:

* Standards are slow to innovate (i.e. we are better than HTML)

* We pay H.264 licence fees, and this is some big philanthropic gesture to the world.

* Flash is "open" (for values of "open" not widely recognised in the industry)

He points out that Apple could build their own Flash player from scratch. He doesn't realise that they neither want to nor need to go on such a wild goose chase as they have everything they need in the combination of native and HTML5. I think that would continue to be true even if Flash was properly opened.

Open Source folks have been reverse engineering Flash for years because they were worried they'd be shut out of the web. Adobe have only opened up now because the tipping point has past and they no longer have a position of strength.

Just like no web streaming fees for H.264 this is an admission of weakness. If Flash or H.264 was as far ahead of the competition as their respective fanboys claim then they'd be using that unassailable position to extract cold hard cash on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is what Adobe did for years on every platform apart from desktops and while it probably earned them a ton of cash it stunted the market and led to stagnation. They claim to have turned this around with the Open (there's that word again) Screen Project but it's all been talk for the last 2 years.

Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

#15

Post by madars »

From Wikipedia:

    On 20 January 2009 Adobe announced it will publish the RTMP specification.
    On 21 May 2009 Adobe filed a DMCA removal request on a Sourceforge-hosted
    implementation of the protocol.
And now we are about to believe that:

    The Flash file format (SWF) specifications are open and unrestricted, so any
    company - even Apple - can build their own Flash Player if they want. Also
    freely available are related specifications for the Flash ecosystem: RTMP
    FLV/F4V, AMF, and MCD.

Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

#16

Post by Flow »

madars wrote: post #15

From Wikipedia: On 20 January 2009 Adobe announced it will publish the RTMP specification. On 21 May 2009 Adobe filed a DMCA removal request on a Sourceforge-hosted implementation of the protocol. And now we are about to believe that: The Flash file format (SWF) specifications are open and unrestricted, so any company - even Apple - can build their own Flash Player if they want. Also freely available are related spec…

Post this info in a reply on that blog entry plz.

Or maybe you did, but their "Open at Adobe" moderator didn't approve it.:)

Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

#18

Post by bartl »

motters wrote: post #17

Although Flash is very popular today, if Adobe don't open source their format then it will be superseded by others. To me the arguments for not going open source given by Adobe seem weak and unconvincing.

The Flash (SWF) format is open (or, so Adobe says)... But their software isn't.

Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

#19

Post by ssp »

bartl wrote: post #18
motters wrote: post #17

Although Flash is very popular today, if Adobe don't open source their format then it will be superseded by others. To me the arguments for not going open source given by Adobe seem weak and unconvincing.

The Flash (SWF) format is open (or, so Adobe says)... But their software isn't.

Their flash specification is not complete.

The blend modes are not specified there. Two of those are strange, flash specific ones that you have to reverse engineer, but the others are similar to PDF.

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