Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
blogs.adobe.com
Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
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Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#2For 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, documented, reproducible crash bugs hanging around for years are inexcusable, for any reason. The main reason I see for this is their slow culture that allows long release cycle and a "we'll fix it in the next release" attitude.
I suspect the second one is far harder to fix, so my recommendation would be for the first one.
Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#3For 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?
Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#4For 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?
I assume they could keep the part that decode H.264 closed source, or other creative solution.
Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#5For 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?
Problems can always be resolved.
Some things are truly impossible (change the taste of the colour purple), some are technically impossible (fly by flapping your wings), and some are just impossible due to disagreements between people (release an open-source implementation of a closed codec).
If you can resolve the first, you're God. If you can resolve the second, you're a technological visionary. If you can resolve the third, you're a good politician. Only the first category can be really considered impossible to achieve. Resolving licensing issues with H.264 is hardly impossible in that respect.
Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#6Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Problems can always be resolved. Some things are truly impossible (change the taste of the colour purple), some are technically impossible (fly by flapping your wings), and some are just impossible due to disagreements between people (release an open-source implementation of a closed codec). If you can resolve the first, you're God. If you can resolve the second, you're a technological visionary. If you can resolve t…
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.
Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problems can always be resolved. Some things are truly impossible (change the taste of the colour purple), some are technically impossible (fly by flapping your wings), and some are just impossible due to disagreements between people (release an open-source implementation of a closed codec). If you can resolve the first, you're God. If you can resolve the second, you're a technological visionary. If you can resolve t…
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.
Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#9"The main reason we can't release Flash Player as open source is because there is technology in the Player that we don't own".
Bullshit. Why don't you open source everything else then ?
Re: Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash
#10"The main reason we can't release Flash Player as open source is because there is technology in the Player that we don't own". Bullshit. Why don't you open source everything else then ?
Yeah, the reasoning is pretty thin here, which is really somewhat insulting. Listen Adobe, it's okay to say "we would like to make money from our code base and must keep it proprietary"... in fact I'd prefer if you'd said that rather than make up a plain-old lie.