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by tptacek 5634 days ago
Give me a break. Flash is even less "open" than Microsoft Office. Both have published portions of their formats and semantics. But Microsoft Office at least has credible (if inferior) alternative implementations. What's the credible alternative to Adobe's Flash runtime?

And who gives a sh!t if Adobe makes contributions to open source? Contributions to open source don't make Flash open source.
1 comments
knowtheory 5634 days ago
Then by your definition Java is as closed as Microsoft Office?

ActionScript and Java are both published standards. Both have a canonical implementation which dominate distribution. Both are used as web plugins. Both standards are controlled by a single corporate entity.

Flash and Java are still free for end users and developers to use and distribute (alternative implementations are handled differently by Oracle & Adobe though).

The same can not be said for H.264. If i as a developer build an app that uses H.264 i have 0 confidence that i will not be sued in the future.

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danudey 5634 days ago
Sure ActionScript is an open standard, but Flash is not. The file format has been published, but has the actual swf format (including its streaming protocols) been ratified by an independent standards body? If so, which one?

Flash's file formats are well-documented, but Adobe decides how it evolves. I can write my own Flash player today, but Adobe might decide tomorrow that they're going to completely change Flash 11's format so that my player is suddenly useless for any new content. They might have even decided it already, and after a year of development, the first I find out about it is on release day. Anyone who's invested time and effort into implementing my player in their software is suddenly screwed until I support the new format (which, because of things like proprietary streaming protocols, I might never be able to do).

This is actually the same problem with WebM. The source code is open, but it's not a community project in the way that something like Apache or PHP is. Google is the one in control, and this is Google's standard. If they're interested in openness, are they going to be submitting WebM to a standards body? Because unless there's a published standard that everyone (including Google) has to adhere to, WebM is even worse than H.264 because there's no guarantee that the money you've spent today will bring you anything tomorrow.

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Locke1689 5634 days ago
OpenJDK? GCJ?
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knowtheory 5634 days ago
No Java implementation is unencumbered as Google is discovering with Dalvik (http://gigaom.com/2010/10/05/google-seeks-dismissal-of-oracl... ), and as the Apache foundation has finally resigned themselves to with the ironically named Harmony (https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_asf_resigns_fr... ).
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ZeroGravitas 5634 days ago
OpenJDK is the Sun (now Oracle) controlled distribution under open source terms. GCJ (which isn't really a "Java" as you'd normally think of it) was put on the backburner by RedHat once OpenJDK became available.
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chaosfox 5634 days ago
I would gladly accept an OpenFlash, even if the code is from Adobe, at least I would know what exactly I'm running on my machine.
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