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Why did you choose this way? A free software reimplementation of Flash seems to me like a much better idea than emulating all the interfaces required to run the

Why did you choose this way? A free software reimplementation of Flash seems to me like a much better idea than emulating all the interfaces required to run the old and unsupported binary blobs from Adobe - possibly on foreign CPU architectures. (Unless you compile to WASM, which it seems that you do - but the emulation overhead is still there.)

apignotti 6y ago
The interface is much cleaner than you can expect, it's the Pepper API that Google engineered for NaCl. That idea was not successful in the end, but the clear interface stayed. The old NPAPI would have been more messy, but still doable. The crucial problem is that the Flash runtime is incredibly extensive, and vaguely documented as well. I started the Lightspark project many years ago, so I know this from personal experience. OSS Flash has value in itself, but to accurately preserve any SWF content, the original binary is the only feasible solution in the medium term. And of course, our VM (CheerpX) has many other use cases, so it has value beside this first Flash oriented product.
- phoe-krk 6y ago
  Understandable - thank you for the explanation.
- jopsen 6y ago
  Can you get a binary flash runtime blob that you are allowed to redistribute? Won't you also need permission to create a derived work from the blob?
  - apignotti 6y ago
    See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25213946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25213946
    - jopsen 6y ago
      So license issues is still a good reason to emulate... Though, I'll agree that technically you'll probably only get widespread compatibility by using the old the binary blobs.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
Getting a reimplementation feature-complete and bug-compatible enough to actually reliably and accurately run old content is hard work that realistically will never be complete. Most current reimplementation attempts cannot play any but the most simple flash games. Sticking the whole thing into a VM and just running the original code achieves both accuracy and safety, at the cost of resources. Given that Flash died long ago, i.e. hardware has advanced since then, resources are not a major issue, and are going to be even less of an issue going forward.

apignotti 6y ago

The interface is much cleaner than you can expect, it's the Pepper API that Google engineered for NaCl. That idea was not successful in the end, but the clear interface stayed. The old NPAPI would have been more messy, but still doable. The crucial problem is that the Flash runtime is incredibly extensive, and vaguely documented as well. I started the Lightspark project many years ago, so I know this from personal experience. OSS Flash has value in itself, but to accurately preserve any SWF content, the original binary is the only feasible solution in the medium term. And of course, our VM (CheerpX) has many other use cases, so it has value beside this first Flash oriented product.

phoe-krk 6y ago
Understandable - thank you for the explanation.
jopsen 6y ago
Can you get a binary flash runtime blob that you are allowed to redistribute? Won't you also need permission to create a derived work from the blob?
- apignotti 6y ago
  See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25213946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25213946
  - jopsen 6y ago
    So license issues is still a good reason to emulate... Though, I'll agree that technically you'll probably only get widespread compatibility by using the old the binary blobs.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

Getting a reimplementation feature-complete and bug-compatible enough to actually reliably and accurately run old content is hard work that realistically will never be complete. Most current reimplementation attempts cannot play any but the most simple flash games. Sticking the whole thing into a VM and just running the original code achieves both accuracy and safety, at the cost of resources. Given that Flash died long ago, i.e. hardware has advanced since then, resources are not a major issue, and are going to be even less of an issue going forward.