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> And before you say Flash & Java Applets already tried that, they had two problems: [...] Second, they resisted open standards. Flash was partially opened by
by q-big 4y ago
> And before you say Flash & Java Applets already tried that, they had two problems: [...] Second, they resisted open standards.
Flash was partially opened by Adobe: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adobe_Flash&oldid=1079980821#Open_Source https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adobe_Flash&oldid...
The SWF file format was documented by Adobe (and the documentation was freely available), many components of Flash were open-sourced, and the Flex framework was released as open source.
- tabtab 4y agoFor some reason no other respected company made their own Flash or Flash-like player with it. HTML took off in part because multiple vendors made browsers such that no one vendor could hold the industry hostage if they turned evil(er) one day. Being "open" on paper and open in practice are often 2 different things.
- q-big 4y agoThere were such projects, e.g. Shumway and Gnash: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shumway_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shumway_(software) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash_(software) It is not Adobe's fault that these open-source projects did not succeed and their development ceased.
- tabtab 4y agoIt is partly Adobe's fault; they played legal games to scare away competitors. Plus, Flash was already falling out of favor by then. Competitors should have started in the late 90's. Also, cloning Flash also meant cloning its security flaws. To simplify the client and have less holes, shift more of the processing burden to the server side: it's easier to patch servers than user clients.