Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#101

Post by bzbarsky » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:20 PM UTC

yabai wrote: post #55

Wow. I remember waiting for flash to come to 64 bit Linux systems... Perhaps Adobe has to continue supporting Chrome to support Googles Chromebooks. In a perfect world, we would have open standards and would never need to rely on a company. Hopefully flash will die quickly (I wish I had a dollar for everytime I have heard this).

Based on other comments in this thread, it sounds like less of "Adobe supporting Chrome" than "Google using its source license for Flash to keep supporting Chrome on Linux". And yes, presumably at least in part due to Chromebooks.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#102

Post by gcp » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:23 PM UTC

Estragon wrote: post #94

gcp wrote: post #40

I can't make much sense of this. Adobe declared Flash dead. Apple declared Flash dead. Google declared Flash dead in Chrome for Android. Now, they're going to continue working on Flash, but only on a new API that is implemented only in a single browser in Linux (and from statements from Apple and Mozilla, will stay that way), but keeping it compatible with the old NPAPI on Windows? What I don't even.... Edit: Could i…

> Google declared Flash dead in Chrome for Android. I'm not part of Google, but i have been studying Native Client pretty closely. I think Google's interest here is that Native Client is designed from the ground up for security. They are happy for Flash to operate through Native Client (which is what the "Pepper" API interfaces), because that largely obviates the security issues it poses. This is excellent news for w…

"Other browsers" have already commented why things like Native Client are absolutely a no-go area. As far as I can tell, the arguments against Pepper run much along the same lines - being dependent on Native Client sure won't help.

If you see the arguments against Native Client, it's also obvious using it to be able to keep supporting Flash would be rather...ironic.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#103

Post by bzbarsky » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

k33n wrote: post #2

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like other browsers are free to implement the "pepper" API as well. It seems as though they are not saying "we're only supporting Chrome". They are saying "Chrome is the only browser that has implemented Pepper so far, and we're only supporting Pepper on Linux".

If I understand things correctly, there are actually two things going on:

1) Adobe is effectively stopping work on Flash for Linux on their end; it's just not worth it to them. 2) Google is going to support Flash for Linux for Chrome specifically. They can do this because they have access to Flash source and because the Pepper version of the plug-in is much more cross-platform than the NPAPI version, so the support effort is not too great. Given that they already ship a modified Flash, not the stock one, it's not that big a difference from what they're already doing.

So I think you're wrong; even if other browsers implemented the Pepper API, they would also need source licenses from Adobe or would be dependent on Google to get the Flash plug-in.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#104

Post by dspillett » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:30 PM UTC

DrJokepu wrote: post #57

gcp wrote: post #40

I can't make much sense of this. Adobe declared Flash dead. Apple declared Flash dead. Google declared Flash dead in Chrome for Android. Now, they're going to continue working on Flash, but only on a new API that is implemented only in a single browser in Linux (and from statements from Apple and Mozilla, will stay that way), but keeping it compatible with the old NPAPI on Windows? What I don't even.... Edit: Could i…

Isn't Chromebook essentially a Linux-based appliance?

Yes, by my understanding. And much closer to "mainstream" Linux kernel-wise than Android. What stack of software they have running atop of that (i.e. between it and Chrome) I can't remember off the top of my head.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#105

Post by notatoad » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:35 PM UTC

slowpoke wrote: post #23

Dear Adobe: just kill Flash already, for good. The world (wide web) will be a better place.

I think it's safe to assume they've already killed it. Web developers can no longer make a reasonable assumption that their users will have flash, therefore flash is no longer a useful general purpose tool. It'll stick around for a long time yet due to enterprise and other lazy programmers, but for wide-audience web content flash is dead.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#106

Post by notatoad » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:40 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #73

slowpoke wrote: post #23

Dear Adobe: just kill Flash already, for good. The world (wide web) will be a better place.

In effect they are. No android support, now nothing except Chrome support on Linux. I'd assume that if my theory is true, Mac OS X will take a similar route(why it didn't happen first is beyond me) before Windows finally meets a similarly gimped fate.

Don't forget that windows is already taking their own steps in this direction with the IE10 metro mode.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#107

Post by radarsat1 » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:47 PM UTC

You know, it's strange that Adobe hasn't considered, at this point in time, open-sourcing the Flash player. Please, hear me out, because I don't just mean this as an HH (Hopeful Hacker), but also as a well-thought-out IBD (Intelligent Business Decision):

Flash has obviously been very beneficial to them in the long run. It has given them the only remaining well-controlled proprietary piece of the web. This helps them sell their IDE, and more importantly, gets their brand out there.

Now, I'd argue that these goals have now been accomplished. Adobe is well-entrenched in web history, and everyone knows what Flash is. However, the relevance of Flash is clearly declining, due to HTML5, and stigma and disgruntlement is increasing. This means they will get less and less sales of their IDE and their name will fizzle out.

Imagine for a second that they open sourced the Flash player. Just the player. Suddenly it would no longer carry such a stigma with Linux, it would be easy to include in distros, developers would contribute fixes and make it more efficient on hard-to-support systems. It would literally stretch out its life-time as a product, and keep Adobe's name on the web.

I argue that Flash has played out its role for Adobe, and if they open source it now it could only benefit them. I did not think this was true in the past, and I think it will not be true in 5 to 10 years when HTML5 has surpassed Flash adoption in the most important venues. However, right now I think it would benefit them immensely.

There also seems to be a sentiment from some of the comments here that they are losing interest in maintaining Flash, so opening it to the community would seem to make some sense. If the "standard" ends up evolving in any way, they'd always have a head-start in their IDE support, since it will easily remain ahead of the curve.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#108

Post by ootachi » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:58 PM UTC

justinschuh wrote: post #87

ootachi wrote: post #14

For reference, here are the thoughts of Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla (and those of Simon Fraser from Apple) on Pepper: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/plugin-futures/2010-April... The thread (which continues into May) goes over pretty clearly why they felt Pepper was a bad idea.

If you read the responses from Chrome engineers on that thread you'll see why a new API was necessary. The requirements and guarantees of your API fundamentally change when you move it out of process for sandboxing and stability. Naive approaches lead to awful performance, deadlocks, or the need to poke massive holes in your security architecture. After a few engineering years of trying to make NPAPI work, it became…

I think the responses from the other browser manufacturers were pretty convincing. The problem, if you read the thread, was not that NPAPI was sufficient. The problem was that Chrome wanted to reinvent all sorts of APIs that already existed in the Web platform. They ignored that issue and did Pepper anyway.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#109

Post by sebastianavina » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 4:59 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #107

You know, it's strange that Adobe hasn't considered, at this point in time, open-sourcing the Flash player. Please, hear me out, because I don't just mean this as an HH (Hopeful Hacker), but also as a well-thought-out IBD (Intelligent Business Decision): Flash has obviously been very beneficial to them in the long run. It has given them the only remaining well-controlled proprietary piece of the web. This helps them…

It could be hard coded into the browsers like javascript.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#110

Post by tikhonj » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:03 PM UTC

This comes at a fine time--I've not been using flash at all. The only site that I regularly used flash for in the past was YouTube, and then only for some videos (the ones with ads). The open source Gnash plugin can play YouTube videos that require flash (it's useless for almost everything else--it can't even play YouTube's ads :P). All the videos that work with HTML5 are better that way. (In a pinch, Gnash would work there too.)

So really, the only things I'm missing are flash games I don't play and ads I don't watch. (Some flash games actually sort of work, but it's not dependable.)