Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

finferflu · 2008-05-04 11:49:55

It seems like Adobe is trying to slowly shift towards Open Source, as its concurrents (i.e. MS) are adopting open standards. Adobe has now launched the "Open Screen Project":

The Open Screen Project, supported by Adobe and several "industry leaders" and announced today, is supposed to foster the creation of a "consistent runtime environment" that will "remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and devices, including phones, mobile Internet devices, and set top boxes". The idea is that such a runtime environment will provide the best performance across a wide range of operating systems.
As part of the Open Screen Project, Adobe announced several changes in their policies towards Flash, "to open access to Adobe Flash technology":
* Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
* Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
* Publishing the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
* Removing licensing fees - making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

Full article here
.

Good news, isn't it?

Allan · 2008-05-04 12:10:48

Well, it should help get gnash dealing with all flash content which would be a good thing.

finferflu · 2008-05-04 12:18:19

That's exactly what I was thinking. Perhaps it will be time to get proper Flash on Linux. I can really see the difference when using Flash on Windows, it's just much lighter. Perhaps by developing Linux-specific apps to handle that format we will end up with something decent.

peets · 2008-05-04 18:30:05

I don't know. I don't like flash's all-in-one mix of interface and logic. I would have preferred a move away from flash. Maybe a more open standard will allow a better flash to be forked? And if open-screen is anything like the current flash and gains wide adoption to the point where I need to use it to communicate with others I will be sad.

We'll see.

finferflu · 2008-05-04 18:36:02

Don't worry, we'll have HTML5 to support embedded audio/video. That will be hopefully the end of at least embedded Flash videos. Surely there will still be people using Flash for the bling on websites. Usually these websites offer poor contents anyway (because the ones with good contents also offer an alternative HTML version), so what we need to worry about here is embedded video, I think.

Until then I hope we can have better support for Flash on Linux.

oliwer · 2008-05-05 10:58:48

@peets: what you are looking for is called Flex.

I believe this Open Screen Project was the only way for Adobe to stay in the competition with Microsoft's Silverlight, which is also open source thanks to the Mono projet (which is itself supported by Microsoft/Novell).

Redroar · 2008-05-05 14:41:06

Something else that this could bring is Flash to the BSDs. Right now Linux at least has a 32-bit Flash 9 player....not much, but something. FreeBSD only has Gnash and swfdec. They're alright, but not yet good enough for me to deal with their idiosyncrasies. If they start opening up the swf format then these projects (on all platforms) could skyrocket in quality.

This was one of the reasons I stopped using FreeBSD on my desktop...perhaps I may return to it one day. I prefer the BSD kernel to the Linux one, as well as the BSD tools to the GNU tools. It just didn't seem quite as logical to me as Arch, but that could likely be the fact that I'm more used to the Linux structure. But Arch is still my first choice. Flash certainly was not the only reason I switched away from FreeBSD.

schivmeister · 2008-05-05 15:14:13

Perhaps, Adobe fears Microsoft's Silverlight?

skottish · 2008-05-05 21:11:59

Allan wrote:

Well, it should help get gnash dealing with all flash content which would be a good thing.

A quick blurb from one of swfdec developers:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/s … 01459.html

Last edited by skottish (2008-05-05 21:13:06)

finferflu · 2008-05-05 21:19:27

skottish wrote:

Allan wrote:
Well, it should help get gnash dealing with all flash content which would be a good thing.
A quick blurb from one of swfdec developers:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/s … 01459.html

Ah, that's interesting. I had thought it would have had a much bigger impact on projects like these...

iBertus · 2008-05-05 21:26:33

finferflu wrote:

skottish wrote:
Allan wrote:
Well, it should help get gnash dealing with all flash content which would be a good thing.
A quick blurb from one of swfdec developers:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/s … 01459.html
Ah, that's interesting. I had thought it would have had a much bigger impact on projects like these...

I suppose that the issue with swfdec and gnash is not understanding the standard from a design perspective, but rather turning that into code and testing the code.

skottish · 2008-05-05 21:36:19

iBertus wrote:

finferflu wrote:
skottish wrote:
A quick blurb from one of swfdec developers:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/s … 01459.html
Ah, that's interesting. I had thought it would have had a much bigger impact on projects like these...
I suppose that the issue with swfdec and gnash is not understanding the standard from a design perspective, but rather turning that into code and testing the code.

This will shed some like on that:

http://www.advogato.org/person/company/ … l?start=34

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-04 11:49:55

Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#2 2008-05-04 12:10:48

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#3 2008-05-04 12:18:19

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#4 2008-05-04 18:30:05

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#5 2008-05-04 18:36:02

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#6 2008-05-05 10:58:48

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#7 2008-05-05 14:41:06

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#8 2008-05-05 15:14:13

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#9 2008-05-05 21:11:59

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#10 2008-05-05 21:19:27

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#11 2008-05-05 21:26:33

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

#12 2008-05-05 21:36:19

Re: Adobe's Open Screen Project. Opinions?

Board footer