I just went through some blogs and the Adobe Open Screen web site to try and understand what's going on. If you haven't heard, Adobe is removing licensing restrictions on it's SWF and FLV/F4V file formats that serve us Flash content and all those crazy videos on YouTube and such. In the past, the license on the specs restricted the reader from creating competing players, which has resulted in some pretty weak open source players that relied on the developers reverse engineering and guessing at what the spec is.
Opening the specs makes that no longer an issue. But the other announcement, that Adobe is going to make its player free for embedded devices as it does with desktops should really remove the need to have other players (which appears to be the true objective of this project), except for the open source bigots who must have their apps served open sauce, I guess. Bringing a free Flash player to devices is huge in my books and with their porting layer APIs made public, that should make it really easy for device developers to port the player to their devices. I think that's pretty game changing and you'll start seeing more Flash-based user interfaces on devices over time.
So it seems like pretty exciting news and it'll be interesting to see where it goes. But, I do hate the fact they're using the term "Open". This is one of my dogmas as colleagues that I've worked with in the past are painfully aware ;). "Open" is too tied to the word "source". And especially when the project is called "Open Screen" it's to easy to jump to the conclusion that they are actually open sourcing their player technology. But from what I can understand from the brief FAQ's they have on their site, I don't think they are. Which then begs the question how do you get their player running on your device. Do they have pre-compiled binaries? Which libc? Which OSes? Which compiler? At any rate it has left me confused and I'm sure others are. I wish people wouldn't use the word "Open" unless they really mean Open Source.
except for the open source bigots who must have their apps served open sauce, I guess.
ReplyDeleteStupid comment. There is a real reason to want decent Open Source flash player: Adobe's player sucks big time on Linux:
* to this day, there's only 32bit x86 plugin for Linux; no 64bit version, so you have to use hacks with sub-par UI experience to run the plugin on x86_64 systems; no PPC version either
* Adobe's player crashes a lot on Linux
* embedding in other browsers than Firefox/Mozilla, particularly those not using GTK+, is problematic and with sub-par UI (mixing multiple toolkits if you finally pull it off)
* limited support for native APIs (while you can plug in e.g. non-Alsa sound, it's nontrivial when you have to build all the stuff as 32bit x86)
Notice the complete lack of any ideological reasons in the list above.
True, but then the issues you raise have nothing to do with the closed-ness of the Adobe Player. Their all quality/product maturity issues.
ReplyDeleteI would guess Adobe's interest to have Player everywhere would give them the drive to fix these.
Hardly; there's not enough financial incentive for it. They want flash "everywhere", even free, because they make money off of that indirectly. The Linux/x86_64 space is just not that large when you compare to the ARM cell phone space. The Linux/x86_64 space is just better situated to fix the problem on its own without Adobe's assistance.
ReplyDeleteHi Doug! I understand your comment about Adobe's use of "open" in the name of this new initiative. But on the other hand, I don't believe that the open source community owns the "open" word. The huge majority of software developers are savvy people -- they know that, unless has something says "open source" in big letters and has a valid open source license to back it up, it ain't open source! So I really doubt that many developers will be misled.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I agree that Adobe should state whether this is, or isn't, an open source project. They've just launched Open Screen, so I'm sure that they'll clarify this and other points over the coming days and weeks. So far, though, the news looks pretty good.
I'm still on the list of skeptics when it comes to the adoption of Flash as the de facto standard for "nice"/"next gen"/"truly interactive" user interface technology.
ReplyDeleteDo I dislike Flash as a technology? No I don't, I actually think it has evolved into something kind of cool.
What I do fear, however, is the company who is behind Flash and the aggressive amount of technology they're generating with the goal of dominating the Internet.
I'm not attacking the innovation or the technology here... not at all! I just fear the fact that Adobe has a well orchestrated and well defined plan/vision/strategy, while the rest of the [open]world seems to be fragmented on multiple alternatives losing the "big picture".
The end result could be an Adobe-controlled Web due to people adopting their new set of technologies and goodies. Doesn't matter if some of these advances become open (as published specs, not as open source), because in the end, the UI would still depend on having the Flash plugin/ActionScript VM installed, which would be under Adobe's control.
So... the only salvation would be to rely on a bunch of open source hackers to develop (reverse) alternatives (such as gnash); pray to the Lord that the platform/OS running in our cellphone/PC/PDA is supported by Adobe's official binary release; and last but not least: wish no one ever releases a world-domination exploit such as the one announced a few days ago (patched already) found in Flash AS3 VM (installed in 98% of the PCs, according to analysts).
So, as some people say: let the market decide... maybe one day Adobe will truly open their sources, just like Sun is doing progressively with Java.
Otherwise, the lack of competent open alternatives to the technologies being released by Adobe will mean the end of the relevance of having an open browser such as Firefox or Opera, because a big chunk of the Web will be hostage to a binary plugin controlled by a single company.
History is cyclic, isn't it?
Let's let the market decide.
Thanks, enrique. Great comment.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Adobe is trying to dominate the market for advanced web UI. But then a lot of people made money writing software for Microsoft's platform with their world domination plot.
If the Linux experience has taught us anything, yes, free and open is great, but it takes a hell of a lot longer to mature. But free and open == popular. The good news is Adobe realizes that and while not open, free works almost as good.