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...and the closed, proprietary authoring tool

• dleslie 7y ago
  That was widely available to huge numbers of designers who already had Adobe's Creative Suite, whether through work or school or from the high seas.
• Google234 7y ago
  There's nothing wrong with using proprietary software. Sometimes it's good to support developers.
  • xtracto 7y ago
    This has been a very interesting change in Hacker News. Back in 2010 when I first learned about it, I was coming from Slashdot. And for me it was a (refreshing) surprise that people here were not anti-paid software, anti-business, etc. After all, it is a forum within a VC firm that looks to fund startups to make a profit. The discussion was more pragmatic. Somehow nowadays the group think has kind of changed into what Slashdot was 10 years ago. Which is funny, since the objective of YC has not changed.
    • AsyncAwait 7y ago
      I like how both of you assume that just because someone wants free software they don't support developers. They may be donating, which is what I do, on the other hand I guarantee you that you're making use of several pieces of free software daily and yet your mindset seems to be, if it's not proprietary, or requiring payment, then it's not worth supporting. I mean I knew this mentality exists, (after all Bill Gates was rather influential), but it's not the OP who is not willing to support developers...
    • VMG 7y ago
      > people here were not anti-paid software, anti-business, etc neither am I
  • braindeath 7y ago
    The software isn’t the issue. The lack of an open standard for content presentation is. This is not to claim that what we have isn’t less than ideal, but the fundamental problem with Flash is not the authoring tool itself, but that it effectively monopolized the space.
  • catalogia 7y ago
    Because Flash and it's tooling were proprietary, the format is now dead and the content created in this format is becoming inaccessible. For as rough as PDF tooling is, flash is even worse.
    • dleslie 7y ago
      You know what's _really_ rough for open data standards? The information diaspora that is the modern web. We're in an archival and interoperability dark ages, despite that the presentation layer is "open".
  • acdha 7y ago
    The problem was that it was the only option and Adobe just wasn't committed to being a good software development shop so when you found a bug you were stuck living with it. I did a modest sized project a decade ago where we kept hitting this cycle: 1. Find a bug in the Flash IDE where something basic (e.g. the debugger) crashes or doesn't work in an obvious, easily tested manner. 2. Report it under the paid support plan (hey, that's what we're paying for, right?) with a straight-forward test case 3. A year later, get an email telling you that a new paid upgrade is out and could you pay another $800 to have the privilege of testing whether the problem is fixed?
  • VMG 7y ago
    I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it. I'm just pointing out that there is a significant hurdle that doesn't exist with HTML.
  • qtplatypus 7y ago
    On the other hand adobe ist sucks up money.