8 ms·

Very narrow minded. Tens of thousands of games rely on flash, along with many movies and general history of the internet. Open souring it will preserve countles

Very narrow minded. Tens of thousands of games rely on flash, along with many movies and general history of the internet. Open souring it will preserve countless hours of lost work.

hk__2 9y ago
Ten of thousands of games are created every year.
- melling 9y ago
  I'm hoping enough people flag this story so it's removed from the front page, and we can get back to more important stories. BTW, don't bother debating this because you'll simply be downvoted for a different opinion. Flag it off the front page and save your karma. It's time for Flash users to learn the having the web based off of closed source Adobe Flash really does have its downsides. They didn't seem to get it 10 years ago. Now it's going to disappear completely. So, in the future when someone patiently explains why you shouldn't used closed source as a web standard, maybe we can all say "remember Flash".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- StevePerkins 9y ago
  Tens of thousands of books are written each year. Tens of thousands of songs are recorded each year. Etc. This is an absurd line of reasoning. People get permission to build Commodore 64 clones, for retro computing preservation, and Hacker News says that's great. Someone requests similar permission for Flash, and now we're upset about the notion of a proprietary codebase being open sourced? Why? Because Steve Jobs said it wasn't cool? Because you're seriously afraid that it would make a comeback, and dethrone HTML5 on the mainstream web? Guys, someone started a petition to ask a company to donate a propriety codebase after EOL. That's all. This is just idle chat, because nothing in Adobe's history suggests that they would actually consider this. Regardless, if you would rather NOT see a historically signficant codebase open sourced, then simply don't sign the petition. And take all the low-quality jokes and guffaws back to Reddit, please.
  - Girlang 9y ago
    But! Steve Jobs says it's bad and the ycombinator folks worship him!
  - hk__2 9y ago
    You’re right; that wasn’t a thoughtful comment.
JustAnotherPat 9y ago
I didn't know Flash devs had a union
revelation 9y ago
They are preserved, no ones making Commodores or GameBoys but I can play all those games just fine. Spin up a XP VM if you want the vintage Flash game experience. (Hello downvotes? It's true, we preserve all of those things through virtual machines of one variety or another. The Flash plugin doesn't magically stop working because Adobe stops developing it.)
- simion314 9y ago
  You would have then to create a Flash VM, probably based on Linux not XP, but you may have issues with 3d acceleration, and it will consume a lot of extra resources. For now you can use the standalone player for some flash content but that could change in a few years and the player may not work in new Windows or Linux releases.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    I wonder if it works in ReactOS?
    - simion314 9y ago
      I have no idea, but I know the standalone Windows version was working fine under Wine for some games I was playing), this only means that the features those games were using worked fine. Reimplementing Windows is hard, I was playing some old RPG games, Fallout3 and Skyrim works fine in Wine(with mods and such), Fallout New Vegas and Oblivion had issues for me(works for others) I got stutters under wine, Oblivion under Windows10 I get a black screen that I could not find a soluton that worked. So old games don't always work latest Windows, I am not sure if a VM would help since 3d and VMS is slow.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  ....Don't both your examples work through opensource emulators? Seems a weird thing to bring up for why we shouldn't opensource a runtime to preserve content....
karmaProtector 9y ago
How are those people called who preserve their garbage? Well, I am happy I never annoyed my fellow humans beings with any flashy products and I would be happy if none of those flash applets would survive 2020. To those who spend a lot of time creating stuff with flash: You knew from the first day that flash was a proprietary software... What happens now, is what happens to all proprietary software one day. So please keep that in mind when you start using the next one. I am truely sorry to be so honest/mean today.
- flashplayer_exe 9y ago
  Here you go have your license to be happy. Now let others have their "garbage" standalone flash player.
- ryanisnan 9y ago
  You must be fun at parties.
- xupybd 9y ago
  Did you actually make an account called KarmaProtector to say something you knew would be downvoted?
- nextlevelwizard 9y ago
  How about all the kids who made animations and games with Flash just because it was the only thing accessible enough? Your reasoning about proprietary stuff is just plain stupid and made completely retrospectively. There is literally no reason why we shouldn't preserve this work just because some people don't see value in them.
phkahler 9y ago
It does not need to be open source. Just save the plug-in along with your legacy browser and legacy OS and run it all on an emulator. Making it open source is an excuse to allow people to continue flash development in some way.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  What if, rather than just play the Flash content, I want to write a tool to convert it to a different format? Or what if I want to port the player to a new platform, or compile it to WASM so I can run it in a browser? There are a lot of things open sourcing Flash would enable that just running it in a VM would not. And also, why do you care if some people _do_ want to continue developing Flash? It's going to get removed from browsers either way. The mere existence of a Flash player on somebody's desktop somewhere is not a security liability for you.
  - phkahler 9y ago
    >> And also, why do you care if some people _do_ want to continue developing Flash? The argument presented was that open sourcing would allow that little bit of internet history to be preserved. My point is that you don't need source code for that. IMHO we don't want anyone to continue developing flash. Even it's creator has declared EOL for it. I understand there are people who want to mess around with it and do things that are potentially interesting, I object to disguising those desires as a preservation activity.
- nextlevelwizard 9y ago
  So instead of being able to make something that just runs flash content when you so choose to you want someone to compile and tend to VM image(s) that runs specific OS and specific browser. All major browsers will stop showing Flash content after it's end of life (that has been confirmed), so I see no harm with having some external software that could run flash games/animations/whatever from a local file. Just like with Java it's the Flash in browser that sucks, not Flash in and of itself.

Very narrow minded. Tens of thousands of games rely on flash, along with many movies and general history of the internet. Open souring it will preserve countless hours of lost work.

hk__2 9y ago

Ten of thousands of games are created every year.

melling 9y ago
I'm hoping enough people flag this story so it's removed from the front page, and we can get back to more important stories. BTW, don't bother debating this because you'll simply be downvoted for a different opinion. Flag it off the front page and save your karma. It's time for Flash users to learn the having the web based off of closed source Adobe Flash really does have its downsides. They didn't seem to get it 10 years ago. Now it's going to disappear completely. So, in the future when someone patiently explains why you shouldn't used closed source as a web standard, maybe we can all say "remember Flash".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
StevePerkins 9y ago
Tens of thousands of books are written each year. Tens of thousands of songs are recorded each year. Etc. This is an absurd line of reasoning. People get permission to build Commodore 64 clones, for retro computing preservation, and Hacker News says that's great. Someone requests similar permission for Flash, and now we're upset about the notion of a proprietary codebase being open sourced? Why? Because Steve Jobs said it wasn't cool? Because you're seriously afraid that it would make a comeback, and dethrone HTML5 on the mainstream web? Guys, someone started a petition to ask a company to donate a propriety codebase after EOL. That's all. This is just idle chat, because nothing in Adobe's history suggests that they would actually consider this. Regardless, if you would rather NOT see a historically signficant codebase open sourced, then simply don't sign the petition. And take all the low-quality jokes and guffaws back to Reddit, please.
- Girlang 9y ago
  But! Steve Jobs says it's bad and the ycombinator folks worship him!
- hk__2 9y ago
  You’re right; that wasn’t a thoughtful comment.

JustAnotherPat 9y ago

I didn't know Flash devs had a union

revelation 9y ago

They are preserved, no ones making Commodores or GameBoys but I can play all those games just fine. Spin up a XP VM if you want the vintage Flash game experience. (Hello downvotes? It's true, we preserve all of those things through virtual machines of one variety or another. The Flash plugin doesn't magically stop working because Adobe stops developing it.)

simion314 9y ago
You would have then to create a Flash VM, probably based on Linux not XP, but you may have issues with 3d acceleration, and it will consume a lot of extra resources. For now you can use the standalone player for some flash content but that could change in a few years and the player may not work in new Windows or Linux releases.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  I wonder if it works in ReactOS?
  - simion314 9y ago
    I have no idea, but I know the standalone Windows version was working fine under Wine for some games I was playing), this only means that the features those games were using worked fine. Reimplementing Windows is hard, I was playing some old RPG games, Fallout3 and Skyrim works fine in Wine(with mods and such), Fallout New Vegas and Oblivion had issues for me(works for others) I got stutters under wine, Oblivion under Windows10 I get a black screen that I could not find a soluton that worked. So old games don't always work latest Windows, I am not sure if a VM would help since 3d and VMS is slow.
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
....Don't both your examples work through opensource emulators? Seems a weird thing to bring up for why we shouldn't opensource a runtime to preserve content....

karmaProtector 9y ago

How are those people called who preserve their garbage? Well, I am happy I never annoyed my fellow humans beings with any flashy products and I would be happy if none of those flash applets would survive 2020. To those who spend a lot of time creating stuff with flash: You knew from the first day that flash was a proprietary software... What happens now, is what happens to all proprietary software one day. So please keep that in mind when you start using the next one. I am truely sorry to be so honest/mean today.

flashplayer_exe 9y ago
Here you go have your license to be happy. Now let others have their "garbage" standalone flash player.
ryanisnan 9y ago
You must be fun at parties.
xupybd 9y ago
Did you actually make an account called KarmaProtector to say something you knew would be downvoted?
nextlevelwizard 9y ago
How about all the kids who made animations and games with Flash just because it was the only thing accessible enough? Your reasoning about proprietary stuff is just plain stupid and made completely retrospectively. There is literally no reason why we shouldn't preserve this work just because some people don't see value in them.

phkahler 9y ago

It does not need to be open source. Just save the plug-in along with your legacy browser and legacy OS and run it all on an emulator. Making it open source is an excuse to allow people to continue flash development in some way.

Ajedi32 9y ago
What if, rather than just play the Flash content, I want to write a tool to convert it to a different format? Or what if I want to port the player to a new platform, or compile it to WASM so I can run it in a browser? There are a lot of things open sourcing Flash would enable that just running it in a VM would not. And also, why do you care if some people _do_ want to continue developing Flash? It's going to get removed from browsers either way. The mere existence of a Flash player on somebody's desktop somewhere is not a security liability for you.
- phkahler 9y ago
  >> And also, why do you care if some people _do_ want to continue developing Flash? The argument presented was that open sourcing would allow that little bit of internet history to be preserved. My point is that you don't need source code for that. IMHO we don't want anyone to continue developing flash. Even it's creator has declared EOL for it. I understand there are people who want to mess around with it and do things that are potentially interesting, I object to disguising those desires as a preservation activity.
nextlevelwizard 9y ago
So instead of being able to make something that just runs flash content when you so choose to you want someone to compile and tend to VM image(s) that runs specific OS and specific browser. All major browsers will stop showing Flash content after it's end of life (that has been confirmed), so I see no harm with having some external software that could run flash games/animations/whatever from a local file. Just like with Java it's the Flash in browser that sucks, not Flash in and of itself.