7 ms·

Official reasons why Adobe doesn't open-source Flash

98 points by swombat 17y ago

swombat 17y ago
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, 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.
- pavs 17y ago
  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?
  - tomerico 17y ago
    I assume they could keep the part that decode H.264 closed source, or other creative solution.
    - baby 17y ago
      or use ogg ?
  - swombat 17y ago
    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.
    - pavs 17y ago
      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.
      - swombat 17y ago
        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.
        pavs 17y ago
        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.
        swombat 17y ago
        "There is only one way to do X" = the way narrow-minded, uncreative people see the world.
        lftl 17y ago
        they can buy H.264 and give it away for free (open source it), which is impossible without making themselves bankrupt. As the discussion around H.264/Theora etc has heated up I've started wondering about this. There are now at least 3 rather large players with relatively deep pockets that all have licensed h.264 for products they essentially give away. So what if Google, Apple, and Adobe all pooled together and purchased the patents for h.264 and licensed it for free (or possibly a free non-commercial license, and force any other big players using it to chip in). I wonder what the price tag on that would be.
  - jwr 17y ago
    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.
    - mambodog 17y ago
      "You can't "own it"." Well sure you can... you can patent it. In that case, making use of even an F/OSS implementation (such as x264) doesn't guarantee that you have not infringed upon MPEG LA's patents (where they are applicable/enforced).
  - joeyo 17y ago
    Presumably they are already paying for H.264 in flash anyway; why would they stop after open sourcing it?
- pvg 17y ago
  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.
mtarnovan 17y ago
"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 ?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  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.
- steve19 17y ago
  "Why don't you open source everything else then ?" Probably because the codebase is a steaming pile of crap.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
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.
madars 17y ago
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.
- Flow 17y ago
  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.:)
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - pingswept 17y ago
    I've just submitted this comment (we'll see if it gets posted): -- Hello Mr. McAllister, I'm glad to hear that Adobe has opened as much as they have. That's the right direction; I'm glad you're doing it. I'm a little concerned about your claim that anyone can implement SWF, RTMP, and so forth. Didn't Adobe issue a DMCA takedown when someone implemented RTMP? Here's a copy of what appears to be the takedown notice: http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/notice.cgi?NoticeID=25159 http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/notice.cgi?... I recognize that that the takedown notice says it was issued because the implementation "can be used to download copyrighted works," not because it's an implementation of RTMP. That's a silly argument-- every web browser that uses a Flash player downloads content before it plays it. How could one implement RTMP, the "Real-Time Messaging Protocol" without sending any messages? I'm willing to believe that there might be some misunderstanding here-- maybe there are two parts to the RTMP spec, and only one is open, or something like that. But at the outset, I can't reconcile what you've written with the rest of the evidence that I see. Perhaps you could explain what I'm missing?
    - 17y ago
motters 17y ago
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.
- bartl 17y ago
  The Flash (SWF) format is open (or, so Adobe says)... But their software isn't.
  - ssp 17y ago
    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.
    - wolfgke 17y ago
      On http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ you can read: "Adobe seriously considers all feedback to the SWF file format specification. E-mail any unclear or potentially erroneous information within the specification to Adobe at flashformat@adobe.com." Has already someone asked for clarification of these details? I ask because the answer would state a lot about Adobe's relation to open specifications.
steve19 17y ago
Like Sun and Java, I think Adobe will eventually open source but when they finally do it, it will be too little too late.
- brown 17y ago
  I think Java developers everywhere were happy that Sun opened up Java, but does anyone think it was a good business decision?
  - nzmsv 17y ago
    Why not? The JRE was a free download for end users anyway, and open-sourcing it removed a large source of bad press. If Java was open-sourced earlier, it might have seen more adoption by hackers, and innovation. Now, it's an "enterprise" language, which basically means it has entered the "legacy" stage of its lifetime, and will go the way of COBOL in under 10 years.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      Well... COBOL and Fortran have been going the dinossaur way for far more than 10 years and show no sign of disappearing...
      - nzmsv 17y ago
        Yes, but would you start a new project in COBOL today?
        rbanffy 17y ago
        That's a silly question. I am a computer conservationist proud of a growing computer collection. Of course I would, just for the kick of it! I would like, of course, to run it on an IBM /360, or, if that were not possible, an emulator. You would access it via your own 3270 terminal. It would be made to look specially cool on 3290s - wouldn't be hard: anything looks cool on a 3290. I would develop it while wearing a white lab coat. A Burroughs B-series would also be considered ;-) Now, seriously, no. I wouldn't start a new product (I can conceive lots of maintenance projects done in whatever was already done to maintain code commonality) in COBOL. And yes, you would have a hard time convincing me of starting one in Java too. I cringe even when someone proposes one in PHP.
mdasen 17y ago
I think Adobe is trying to negate a lot of bad press that they're getting in the techie community. It started with Jobs/Apple saying that they crash a lot and continued with all of our old complaints being dredged up. Adobe claimed that they don't ship Flash Players with any known crashing bugs. They had a great blog post and it made at least me feel that maybe it wasn't their fault. Then the evidence is presented that they not only ship with known crashing bugs, but neglect to fix them for years. Now comes the argument that they aren't allowed to open-source Flash because some of it is non-free. However, madars has already pointed out that Adobe has taken legal action over the RTMP protocol (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1107585 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1107585) and, similarly (although a tad dated) Rob Savoye of the Gnash (GNU Flash) project has said: The Adobe EULA for Flash forbids anyone who has installed their Flash tools or plugin from working on Flash technologies. This has had a chilling effect on the development of free Flash players, since a developer must either choose to decide that Adobe won't sue them over this, or to do what Gnash does, which is a slow and inefficient, clean room, reverse engineering project. Adobe has declined to comment on this issue, since the confusion benefits their lockin of the market. Although Adobe has said they support Open Source projects, and donated Tamarin to Mozilla, we'd love to see a public statement that Gnash developers won't be subject to a lawsuit. It's very difficult to find developers that have never installed the Adobe software ever, which is what we've been doing to maintain our clean room approach. (http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/30 http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/30) Adobe's hasn't been given a lot of hassle over Flash for a long time. We've kind of accepted that it was free as in beer, ran on Linux (if poorly), etc. Now we're seeing that Flash could become the barrier to HTML5 and we're finally re-evaluating Adobe's patronage. We've found out that we don't want to be Adobe's ward - protected, well-fed, etc. We want to be able to live and innovate for ourselves.
- BearOfNH 17y ago
  It's very difficult to find developers that have never installed the Adobe software ever Kids -- by which I mean anybody under 18 -- cannot enter into contracts. An Adobe EULA cannot be enforced against somebody so young. In lawyer-speak the EULA is "voidable" (as opposed to "void"). So all you'd need do is hire 'em young and make sure they don't agree to anything once they turn 18. IANAL, do this at your own risk, yada-yada-yada.
cammil 17y ago
What are peoples views here on using Flash for rich internet applications? In particular, what do you think are the benefits of using Flash/Flex? It seems to me that development for prototyping and proof of concept is cheaper and quicker in Flash/Flex and is still usable by a massive portion of internet users, even if it will not be in the future.
- protomyth 17y ago
  HTML5 doesn't really have good software developer support in the way Flash does. I am waiting for some small software company to do a designer's tool for HTML5.
est 17y ago
I got a similar response on why Google Talk's standalone Win32 client can not be open sourced: because there's a GlobalIPSound module in it. But still I think FlashPlayer/GoogleTalk can be open sourced, just leave the proprietary module as a stub, just like the Chromium without H.264 and Bookmark Sync.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
santagada 17y ago
Just put the h.264 code in a directory that is in a closed repository. Why is that soo hard? I don't believe the h.264 license limits the exposure of your internal api.
- santagada 17y ago
  ahh and the chrome/chromium browser has done just that so it is not even novelty.
ams6110 17y ago
"Official reasons" ??? The subhead of this blog states: Please note that opinions expressed within are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Adobe.
- simonk 17y ago
  The blog is at http://blogs.adobe.com http://blogs.adobe.com and called "Open at Adobe". The person writing it is Director of Open Source and Standards (OSS) at Adobe, its an official comment.
  - otakucode 17y ago
    Perhaps they should amend their disclaimer to say "but it does not NOT necessarily represent the views of Adobe either."
kreneskyp 17y ago
Even Real [Networks] figured out how open source the majority of their code base while retaining support for closed technologies such as h.264. The only reason Adobe can't open their code is lack of effort.
TallGuyShort 17y ago
As someone who programs in ActionScript very often and makes heavy use out of RTMP, I'm very well aware of Flash's shortcomings and how quickly they would be fixed if it were more open. However, I really wish discussions like this weren't full of so much empty talk. If you don't like Flash, don't use it. Uninstall the Flash player and leave it all behind. Fact is, they have succeeded in getting a proprietary and commerically-trusted video codec available for the masses. If you think that is such a small feat, or such an insignficant reason to keep it closed, I challenge you to do better. If a lot of people really didn't like Flash and actually didn't something about it, Adobe would get the message REAL quick.
- protomyth 17y ago
  I think the HTML5 people are doing just that, and I think this string of blog posts Adobe is pushing out is the reaction. I think the bigger problem is that Adobe Flash team and certain Adobe executives are not quite dealing with what their customers are telling them in a mature way or totally truthful way. This tends to annoy people.
coderdude 17y ago
I'm surprised that no one is concerned that open sourcing Flash would be dangerous. Flash is installed on some 95% of machines, or so I read. If they open source Flash and allow everyone the ability to find the holes, we'll have a flood of exploits that affect everyone. I thank Adobe for keeping their implementation of Flash closed source.

98 points by swombat 17y ago

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, 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.

pavs 17y ago
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?
- tomerico 17y ago
  I assume they could keep the part that decode H.264 closed source, or other creative solution.
  - baby 17y ago
    or use ogg ?
- swombat 17y ago
  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.
  - pavs 17y ago
    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.
    - swombat 17y ago
      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.
      - pavs 17y ago
        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.
        swombat 17y ago
        "There is only one way to do X" = the way narrow-minded, uncreative people see the world.
        lftl 17y ago
        they can buy H.264 and give it away for free (open source it), which is impossible without making themselves bankrupt. As the discussion around H.264/Theora etc has heated up I've started wondering about this. There are now at least 3 rather large players with relatively deep pockets that all have licensed h.264 for products they essentially give away. So what if Google, Apple, and Adobe all pooled together and purchased the patents for h.264 and licensed it for free (or possibly a free non-commercial license, and force any other big players using it to chip in). I wonder what the price tag on that would be.
- jwr 17y ago
  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.
  - mambodog 17y ago
    "You can't "own it"." Well sure you can... you can patent it. In that case, making use of even an F/OSS implementation (such as x264) doesn't guarantee that you have not infringed upon MPEG LA's patents (where they are applicable/enforced).
- joeyo 17y ago
  Presumably they are already paying for H.264 in flash anyway; why would they stop after open sourcing it?
pvg 17y ago
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.

mtarnovan 17y ago

"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 ?

potatolicious 17y ago
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.
steve19 17y ago
"Why don't you open source everything else then ?" Probably because the codebase is a steaming pile of crap.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

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.

madars 17y ago

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.

Flow 17y ago
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.:)
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- pingswept 17y ago
  I've just submitted this comment (we'll see if it gets posted): -- Hello Mr. McAllister, I'm glad to hear that Adobe has opened as much as they have. That's the right direction; I'm glad you're doing it. I'm a little concerned about your claim that anyone can implement SWF, RTMP, and so forth. Didn't Adobe issue a DMCA takedown when someone implemented RTMP? Here's a copy of what appears to be the takedown notice: http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/notice.cgi?NoticeID=25159 http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/notice.cgi?... I recognize that that the takedown notice says it was issued because the implementation "can be used to download copyrighted works," not because it's an implementation of RTMP. That's a silly argument-- every web browser that uses a Flash player downloads content before it plays it. How could one implement RTMP, the "Real-Time Messaging Protocol" without sending any messages? I'm willing to believe that there might be some misunderstanding here-- maybe there are two parts to the RTMP spec, and only one is open, or something like that. But at the outset, I can't reconcile what you've written with the rest of the evidence that I see. Perhaps you could explain what I'm missing?
  - 17y ago

motters 17y ago

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.

bartl 17y ago
The Flash (SWF) format is open (or, so Adobe says)... But their software isn't.
- ssp 17y ago
  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.
  - wolfgke 17y ago
    On http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ you can read: "Adobe seriously considers all feedback to the SWF file format specification. E-mail any unclear or potentially erroneous information within the specification to Adobe at flashformat@adobe.com." Has already someone asked for clarification of these details? I ask because the answer would state a lot about Adobe's relation to open specifications.

steve19 17y ago

Like Sun and Java, I think Adobe will eventually open source but when they finally do it, it will be too little too late.

brown 17y ago
I think Java developers everywhere were happy that Sun opened up Java, but does anyone think it was a good business decision?
- nzmsv 17y ago
  Why not? The JRE was a free download for end users anyway, and open-sourcing it removed a large source of bad press. If Java was open-sourced earlier, it might have seen more adoption by hackers, and innovation. Now, it's an "enterprise" language, which basically means it has entered the "legacy" stage of its lifetime, and will go the way of COBOL in under 10 years.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Well... COBOL and Fortran have been going the dinossaur way for far more than 10 years and show no sign of disappearing...
    - nzmsv 17y ago
      Yes, but would you start a new project in COBOL today?
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        That's a silly question. I am a computer conservationist proud of a growing computer collection. Of course I would, just for the kick of it! I would like, of course, to run it on an IBM /360, or, if that were not possible, an emulator. You would access it via your own 3270 terminal. It would be made to look specially cool on 3290s - wouldn't be hard: anything looks cool on a 3290. I would develop it while wearing a white lab coat. A Burroughs B-series would also be considered ;-) Now, seriously, no. I wouldn't start a new product (I can conceive lots of maintenance projects done in whatever was already done to maintain code commonality) in COBOL. And yes, you would have a hard time convincing me of starting one in Java too. I cringe even when someone proposes one in PHP.

mdasen 17y ago

I think Adobe is trying to negate a lot of bad press that they're getting in the techie community. It started with Jobs/Apple saying that they crash a lot and continued with all of our old complaints being dredged up. Adobe claimed that they don't ship Flash Players with any known crashing bugs. They had a great blog post and it made at least me feel that maybe it wasn't their fault. Then the evidence is presented that they not only ship with known crashing bugs, but neglect to fix them for years. Now comes the argument that they aren't allowed to open-source Flash because some of it is non-free. However, madars has already pointed out that Adobe has taken legal action over the RTMP protocol (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1107585 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1107585) and, similarly (although a tad dated) Rob Savoye of the Gnash (GNU Flash) project has said: The Adobe EULA for Flash forbids anyone who has installed their Flash tools or plugin from working on Flash technologies. This has had a chilling effect on the development of free Flash players, since a developer must either choose to decide that Adobe won't sue them over this, or to do what Gnash does, which is a slow and inefficient, clean room, reverse engineering project. Adobe has declined to comment on this issue, since the confusion benefits their lockin of the market. Although Adobe has said they support Open Source projects, and donated Tamarin to Mozilla, we'd love to see a public statement that Gnash developers won't be subject to a lawsuit. It's very difficult to find developers that have never installed the Adobe software ever, which is what we've been doing to maintain our clean room approach. (http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/30 http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/30) Adobe's hasn't been given a lot of hassle over Flash for a long time. We've kind of accepted that it was free as in beer, ran on Linux (if poorly), etc. Now we're seeing that Flash could become the barrier to HTML5 and we're finally re-evaluating Adobe's patronage. We've found out that we don't want to be Adobe's ward - protected, well-fed, etc. We want to be able to live and innovate for ourselves.

BearOfNH 17y ago
It's very difficult to find developers that have never installed the Adobe software ever Kids -- by which I mean anybody under 18 -- cannot enter into contracts. An Adobe EULA cannot be enforced against somebody so young. In lawyer-speak the EULA is "voidable" (as opposed to "void"). So all you'd need do is hire 'em young and make sure they don't agree to anything once they turn 18. IANAL, do this at your own risk, yada-yada-yada.

cammil 17y ago

What are peoples views here on using Flash for rich internet applications? In particular, what do you think are the benefits of using Flash/Flex? It seems to me that development for prototyping and proof of concept is cheaper and quicker in Flash/Flex and is still usable by a massive portion of internet users, even if it will not be in the future.

protomyth 17y ago
HTML5 doesn't really have good software developer support in the way Flash does. I am waiting for some small software company to do a designer's tool for HTML5.

est 17y ago

I got a similar response on why Google Talk's standalone Win32 client can not be open sourced: because there's a GlobalIPSound module in it. But still I think FlashPlayer/GoogleTalk can be open sourced, just leave the proprietary module as a stub, just like the Chromium without H.264 and Bookmark Sync.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

santagada 17y ago

Just put the h.264 code in a directory that is in a closed repository. Why is that soo hard? I don't believe the h.264 license limits the exposure of your internal api.

santagada 17y ago
ahh and the chrome/chromium browser has done just that so it is not even novelty.

ams6110 17y ago

"Official reasons" ??? The subhead of this blog states: Please note that opinions expressed within are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Adobe.

simonk 17y ago
The blog is at http://blogs.adobe.com http://blogs.adobe.com and called "Open at Adobe". The person writing it is Director of Open Source and Standards (OSS) at Adobe, its an official comment.
- otakucode 17y ago
  Perhaps they should amend their disclaimer to say "but it does not NOT necessarily represent the views of Adobe either."

kreneskyp 17y ago

Even Real [Networks] figured out how open source the majority of their code base while retaining support for closed technologies such as h.264. The only reason Adobe can't open their code is lack of effort.

TallGuyShort 17y ago

As someone who programs in ActionScript very often and makes heavy use out of RTMP, I'm very well aware of Flash's shortcomings and how quickly they would be fixed if it were more open. However, I really wish discussions like this weren't full of so much empty talk. If you don't like Flash, don't use it. Uninstall the Flash player and leave it all behind. Fact is, they have succeeded in getting a proprietary and commerically-trusted video codec available for the masses. If you think that is such a small feat, or such an insignficant reason to keep it closed, I challenge you to do better. If a lot of people really didn't like Flash and actually didn't something about it, Adobe would get the message REAL quick.

protomyth 17y ago
I think the HTML5 people are doing just that, and I think this string of blog posts Adobe is pushing out is the reaction. I think the bigger problem is that Adobe Flash team and certain Adobe executives are not quite dealing with what their customers are telling them in a mature way or totally truthful way. This tends to annoy people.

coderdude 17y ago

I'm surprised that no one is concerned that open sourcing Flash would be dangerous. Flash is installed on some 95% of machines, or so I read. If they open source Flash and allow everyone the ability to find the holes, we'll have a flood of exploits that affect everyone. I thank Adobe for keeping their implementation of Flash closed source.