3 ms·

its already far far too late for adobe, if they had open sourced 10 years ago, there wouldnt be a html5 video and canvas, flash would be the standard. open sou

its already far far too late for adobe, if they had open sourced 10 years ago, there wouldnt be a html5 video and canvas, flash would be the standard. open sourcing it now will help them stay relevant for longer but it will be a band aid, proprietary tools will be replaced by web standards on the internet thats more obvious now than it ever was. flash can innovate by raising the limit on what you can do, but there is a roof on that functionality the gap between it and where web standards are now is getting smaller and smaller.

nanairo 16y ago
I may be wrong, but I think Adobe 10 years ago was pushing for things like html5 video and canvas... because Flash was Macromedia's. It was a case of: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. (They were also one of the first big companies to push SVG from what I remember).
- daleharvey 16y ago
  heh not the first time I have made that mistake, when I say "they" I mean macromedia / whoever happened to be in charge of flash at the time of whatever incidence we are talking about.
  - nanairo 16y ago
    But I am not sure Flash was really comparable to what it is today back in the days of Macromedia. Did we have Youtube and company back then? My gut feeling is that Adobe there went from "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" to "hey, wait a minute: we could actually BUY it, and CONTROL it". Adobe bought Macromedia and suddenly Flash was great and amazing and they integrated it with the rest of the their portfolio. The question I am trying to put is: back in the days of Macromedia, do you think they would have clanged on Flash on mobile like they life depended on it? (this is not a rhetorical question, btw, I am really wondering: I didn't follow Adobe and Macromedia much in those days)
    - daleharvey 16y ago
      I only ever seen the flash progression in those times from peeking over the wall at the other side so people might be able to correct me, but I dont think the adobe acquisition did flash a whole lot of favours, it managed to get its 98% etc penetration well before adobe was ever around. Back in those days flash vs html for plain websites was a serious debate, under adobe while video has got massively popular, flash has been further and further marginalised as a tool almost only for games, adverts and video. I certainly couldnt see macromedia open sourcing flash any more than I could see adobe doing it without this pressure, if anything I think macromedia were even more aggressive with shutting down alternative players, at that time they were competing with html which broke in every browser, they wanted to make certain it was write once run everywhere. To be honest I am entirely biased, but its always seemed obvious to me that open web standards will very very slowly replace virtually everything proprietary on the web. right now there is not one decent web publishing tool and I am pretty stunned that adobe havent stepped up to produce one yet (dreamweaver does not count, and neither does flash exporting canvas). Heres hoping whoever does makes sure it works on linux :)
zmmmmm 16y ago
I think the window is closing but if they can pull it off (a BIG if), they have a chance at being the only cross platform runtime that works across a majority of phone platforms (I'm assuming they will get on WP7, and that they get Air onto all the existing platforms that already support flash via updates). If they do, its hard for me to see how a lot of developers won't be doing Flash + iPhone versions of their apps first and only then native implementations. I'm not particularly looking forward to this, but it just seems obvious.
est 16y ago
> proprietary tools will be replaced by web standards on the internet thats more obvious now than it ever was There are millions of third party Flash authoring tools, both proprietary and free ones.

nanairo 16y ago

I may be wrong, but I think Adobe 10 years ago was pushing for things like html5 video and canvas... because Flash was Macromedia's. It was a case of: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. (They were also one of the first big companies to push SVG from what I remember).

daleharvey 16y ago
heh not the first time I have made that mistake, when I say "they" I mean macromedia / whoever happened to be in charge of flash at the time of whatever incidence we are talking about.
- nanairo 16y ago
  But I am not sure Flash was really comparable to what it is today back in the days of Macromedia. Did we have Youtube and company back then? My gut feeling is that Adobe there went from "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" to "hey, wait a minute: we could actually BUY it, and CONTROL it". Adobe bought Macromedia and suddenly Flash was great and amazing and they integrated it with the rest of the their portfolio. The question I am trying to put is: back in the days of Macromedia, do you think they would have clanged on Flash on mobile like they life depended on it? (this is not a rhetorical question, btw, I am really wondering: I didn't follow Adobe and Macromedia much in those days)
  - daleharvey 16y ago
    I only ever seen the flash progression in those times from peeking over the wall at the other side so people might be able to correct me, but I dont think the adobe acquisition did flash a whole lot of favours, it managed to get its 98% etc penetration well before adobe was ever around. Back in those days flash vs html for plain websites was a serious debate, under adobe while video has got massively popular, flash has been further and further marginalised as a tool almost only for games, adverts and video. I certainly couldnt see macromedia open sourcing flash any more than I could see adobe doing it without this pressure, if anything I think macromedia were even more aggressive with shutting down alternative players, at that time they were competing with html which broke in every browser, they wanted to make certain it was write once run everywhere. To be honest I am entirely biased, but its always seemed obvious to me that open web standards will very very slowly replace virtually everything proprietary on the web. right now there is not one decent web publishing tool and I am pretty stunned that adobe havent stepped up to produce one yet (dreamweaver does not count, and neither does flash exporting canvas). Heres hoping whoever does makes sure it works on linux :)

zmmmmm 16y ago

I think the window is closing but if they can pull it off (a BIG if), they have a chance at being the only cross platform runtime that works across a majority of phone platforms (I'm assuming they will get on WP7, and that they get Air onto all the existing platforms that already support flash via updates). If they do, its hard for me to see how a lot of developers won't be doing Flash + iPhone versions of their apps first and only then native implementations. I'm not particularly looking forward to this, but it just seems obvious.

est 16y ago

> proprietary tools will be replaced by web standards on the internet thats more obvious now than it ever was There are millions of third party Flash authoring tools, both proprietary and free ones.