Comments on: Big news: Flash goes completely open!

By: Joshua Goodwin

Joshua Goodwin — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:08:48 +0000

At first, I thought “you posted this one month late”.

By: Dietrich Kappe

Dietrich Kappe — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:40:29 +0000

Lest anyone think that this somehow means that Flash is going Open Source, there is no “source,” i.e. Adobe is removing licensing restriction from their spec and publishing API details, but not open sourcing anything.

By: David Arno

David Arno — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:56:40 +0000

@Briga,

If the cost of Flex Builder is an issue for you, get yourself over http://www.flashdevelop.org and download a copy of FlashDevelop 3. It is a free, open source, and superbly implemented Flasg/ Flex AIR IDE.

By: Briga

Briga — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:42:03 +0000

The BIG new would be Flex Builder free.

By: Stefan Richter

Stefan Richter — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:45:50 +0000

Follow up on my previous comment, I am still not convinced. This seems very device centric:

# Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
# Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

Notice the term device(s). So the porting APIs only for devices? License fee removal for devices only (because other platform were free anyway, or do they still pay?)?

Or is the first point
# Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
the one that we should focus on? I know that’s a big one.

Not trying to spoil the party, just wanting to be clear on what exactly is happening.

Stefan

By: Olly

Olly — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:35:56 +0000

Mmm, I don’t think this is a huge thing for the “big” platforms. It’s more of a political move.

Where I can see it being important is niche platforms who are reliant on open source SWF players because there isn’t an official player available. I’m thinking places like obscure UNIXes, QNX, AROS and so on.

It’d also be interesting to see if any of the browser engines gained “native” SWF support… highly unlikely, I know.

By: Ben Clinkinbeard

Ben Clinkinbeard — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:14:49 +0000

I generally make it a personal policy not to promote my blog on others’ sites but I just posted a different view of the project and would love to hear thoughts and opinions of others. If you feel so inclined the post is at http://www.returnundefined.com/2008/05/is-the-open-screen-project-a-good-thing.

By: Andrei Potorac

Andrei Potorac — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:58:27 +0000

WOW! I had an argument with a friend some weeks ago about this. And I told him that the future of the internet multimedia stays on Flash hands. He said I was wrong because it’s not open source.

Guess who I sent this news first.

By: Nick Main

Nick Main — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:45:04 +0000

This is excellent !

Every time I think I’ve figured out where to go with open source Flash projects (such as JavaSWF) Adobe pulls something like this.

Rather than trying to figure out how to react (implementing a usable SWF renderer is hard) I’m just going to create a machine-readable model of the SWF format and let others generate SWF parsing code from that.

Once the FLA format is opened up in the next version of the Flash IDE (it will be zipped XML + assets) the whole Flash authoring workflow will be a playground for open source. Good times ahead !

By: Lee McColl Sylvester

Lee McColl Sylvester — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:22:07 +0000

Just to put in a point, here. With SWF open, and people free to build their own players, it’s likely that Microsoft will make the SWF format compatible on SilverLight. It’s also likely that others will want to do similar things, such as companies like Google and Sun providing support for SWF on similar runtimes. There could very well be other large companies, who until now, have lain dorment waiting for such a move before grabbing hold of the technology and boosting their own player or SWF consuming device. Who knows, I’m reaching here.

Well, now we’ve reached this important milestone, let’s start campaiging to get the Flash player made open source!!!