5 ms·

There is a ton of existing valuable, fun, educational, historical, etc Flash content on the web. There's no reason to cut off access to it if it can be handled

There is a ton of existing valuable, fun, educational, historical, etc Flash content on the web. There's no reason to cut off access to it if it can be handled more securely and more cheaply, which is what this project is intending to do. If they convert to this new system, they can retire a chunk of the older plugin framework which will soon only allow Flash anyway.

WhitneyLand 10y ago
Maybe it's worth someone else keeping access to the existing content alive, but that doesn't mean it has to live inside Firefox and use up time and money that could be better invested in forward looking tech. Separate projects/apps should instead be maintained by whomever thinks it's worth the investment. If no one else steps up to maintain such a niche Flash project, then we know maybe the content wasn't worth saving.
- jbpetersen 10y ago
  Personally I'd like to see money and/or talent tossed at The Internet Archive for things like this. Flash support runs contrary to maintaining a modern browser, while it's entirely aligned with the mission to preserve parts of the internet as reference material.
scrollaway 10y ago
Shumway. Shumway shumway SHUMWAY! This is what Shumway was supposed to be for. Creating a Flash runtime in javascript/html5 which would allow all that "existing valuable fun, educational, historical etc Flash content" to live on, without making it attractive to continue creating Flash content. Allowing all that content to be archived for the future. Unfortunately, according to that same thread, Shumway's been killed off. Without shumway, we're now losing a huge chunk of the web's early history and the first years of online video games, gaming on the web, etc. Whatever.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  Homestar Runner alone is worth it.
- saurik 10y ago
  I wish I understood what Firefox's mission is anymore, or what their goals were... they seem to just be randomly wandering around from vision to vision without really ever completing anything, which is not only extremely depressing but also extremely annoying, as I really really want to feel like there is an "upstream" I trust for "the web" :/.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    From what I've read, the leadership of Mozilla has been taken over by money-minded suits rather than those who understand the mission of Mozilla, and there's a rift between the engineering team and this leadership. Of course I'm sure the reality is more nuanced than that, and I'm sure there are principled leaders that still remain at Mozilla, but that's the general impression I get. It's not unusual either, for non-profits to become more corporate over time, sadly it's a reflection on what can happen when the financial base of an organisation relies on making money.
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      Well, I really still want tomboy what they stand for. First it was mobile, then it was a project to authenticate, then it was IoT, now... What?
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
        You can't reduce a collection of the priorities of individuals down to a single one. Mozilla doesn't have a single direction in the same way Apple or Google don't have a single direction. You can look at the general goal of pushing the web forward if you want, but that idea has many forms of expression. The real problem doesn't come from being confused about what Mozilla 'stands for', it's comes from short term thinking by their leadership. Their products are being undermined by a leadership that doesn't understand their potential worth (both in terms of their importance to the web, and financially to Mozilla). Without leadership that looks long term at what benefits the web and has a vision of how to get there, that leadership will mostly be a hindrance. Thankfully the engineering teams seemed to have struck gold with Rust/Servo (and in ASM.JS's influence on WebAssembly), which should serve Mozilla well as the technical basis for future development.

WhitneyLand 10y ago

Maybe it's worth someone else keeping access to the existing content alive, but that doesn't mean it has to live inside Firefox and use up time and money that could be better invested in forward looking tech. Separate projects/apps should instead be maintained by whomever thinks it's worth the investment. If no one else steps up to maintain such a niche Flash project, then we know maybe the content wasn't worth saving.

jbpetersen 10y ago
Personally I'd like to see money and/or talent tossed at The Internet Archive for things like this. Flash support runs contrary to maintaining a modern browser, while it's entirely aligned with the mission to preserve parts of the internet as reference material.

scrollaway 10y ago

Shumway. Shumway shumway SHUMWAY! This is what Shumway was supposed to be for. Creating a Flash runtime in javascript/html5 which would allow all that "existing valuable fun, educational, historical etc Flash content" to live on, without making it attractive to continue creating Flash content. Allowing all that content to be archived for the future. Unfortunately, according to that same thread, Shumway's been killed off. Without shumway, we're now losing a huge chunk of the web's early history and the first years of online video games, gaming on the web, etc. Whatever.

moron4hire 10y ago
Homestar Runner alone is worth it.
saurik 10y ago
I wish I understood what Firefox's mission is anymore, or what their goals were... they seem to just be randomly wandering around from vision to vision without really ever completing anything, which is not only extremely depressing but also extremely annoying, as I really really want to feel like there is an "upstream" I trust for "the web" :/.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  From what I've read, the leadership of Mozilla has been taken over by money-minded suits rather than those who understand the mission of Mozilla, and there's a rift between the engineering team and this leadership. Of course I'm sure the reality is more nuanced than that, and I'm sure there are principled leaders that still remain at Mozilla, but that's the general impression I get. It's not unusual either, for non-profits to become more corporate over time, sadly it's a reflection on what can happen when the financial base of an organisation relies on making money.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    Well, I really still want tomboy what they stand for. First it was mobile, then it was a project to authenticate, then it was IoT, now... What?
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      You can't reduce a collection of the priorities of individuals down to a single one. Mozilla doesn't have a single direction in the same way Apple or Google don't have a single direction. You can look at the general goal of pushing the web forward if you want, but that idea has many forms of expression. The real problem doesn't come from being confused about what Mozilla 'stands for', it's comes from short term thinking by their leadership. Their products are being undermined by a leadership that doesn't understand their potential worth (both in terms of their importance to the web, and financially to Mozilla). Without leadership that looks long term at what benefits the web and has a vision of how to get there, that leadership will mostly be a hindrance. Thankfully the engineering teams seemed to have struck gold with Rust/Servo (and in ASM.JS's influence on WebAssembly), which should serve Mozilla well as the technical basis for future development.