Does this mean we're closer to a fully working open source flash player ?

[oedipuss]

http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/

[seatex]

I sure hope so.

64-bit!

[Sef]

It does not seem truly open. Adobe still controls the final output.

If you want a truly opensource flash player, check out GNash (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/). It is made for 64-bit. It is in beta now. Fully supports adobe flash 7, and some support for flashes 8.5 and 9.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Yeh but at least the protocols themselves are mostly open :D

[geoken]

What it means is that Gnash and SWFdec will be able to accelerate their development because the SWF spec will now be open. Currently, creating an SWF 'player' requires a compiled SWF to be reverse engineered.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Right and with this gnash and other free alternatives will have access to more current flash technologies...
soon in linux gnash or swfdec could take over for adobe full time if one wishes to.
either way this is good news, even if flash itself remains proprietary its implementation has gone practically open source making it on par with MP3(mp3 is almost open source too thanks to the owners of the format not minding open implementation)
so in short no matter how you say it, this is very good news indeed.

[geoken]

I think this will go beyond mp3 and be more like PDF. From the sound of this announcement reading the spec and creating a player won't require any licences to be paid.

[SunnyRabbiera]

aye, though MP3 is getting more open these days...
looks like almost everyone is looking at open source now, even if a lot of stuff remains proprietary at least the support will be there

[eragon100]

Does it matter? Right now, the normal flash player works correctly with youtube.

Gnash doesn't, so I don't use it. If they have problems with adobe I feel sorry for them,but I simply use what is best fit for the task. If that's a open-source program, so be it. If that's a closed-source program, so be it. As long as my computer works. It are my rights that are being restrained by proprietary licences, and I don't care about being able to modify the source code of a program :guitar:

[SunnyRabbiera]

Yeh but this can make gnash much better and make it work for more people including you...
that way the choice factor becomes more appealing :D

[FuturePilot]

Does it matter? Right now, the normal flash player works correctly with youtube.



Right now the normal Flash player is constantly crashing my browser and eating my CPU and it has terrible playback performance. I'm sure a lot of others will agree with that too. Yet these problems only exist on the Linux Flash player. I've never had any of those problems with the Windows version. And Adobe will not fix them. Having openness or more openness, we may be able to fix these problems since Adobe won't.

[SunnyRabbiera]

aye, though I never had too many catastrophic issues with flash myself...
still this translates to better stability, gnash and swfdec are native to linux and this can benefit them greatly.

[eragon100]

I dont' have any problems at all with flash, except that it doesn't support opera, which I like better than firefox.

So, if gnash supports opera, even though that's offcourse a proprietary browser, and works just as well or better as/then flash, I will use it :popcorn:

[howlingmadhowie]

gnash has other advantages. with gnash i'm able to view a lot of flash content on my ultrasparc running ubuntu and on my imac also running ubuntu.

one of the large advantages of free software is that it frees the hands of hardware manufacturers to produce better products. there are some absolutely fascinating chip architectures out there which don't stand a chance because microsoft won't compile windows for them.

[SunnyRabbiera]

aye and with this gnash can be just as good as regular flash

[geoken]

The point is that the open implementations can now begin to compete with the flash player. Gnash and SWFdec are so far behind because they can not use the SWF spec to create their player. They must rely on decompiling an SWF file (which is a binary file) and reverse engineering.

[eragon100]

Isn't reversre engineering illegal according to the flash EULA :confused:

Can't Adobe sue them for that :confused:

[SunnyRabbiera]

The point is that the open implementations can now begin to compete with the flash player. Gnash and SWFdec are so far behind because they can not use the SWF spec to create their player. They must rely on decompiling an SWF file (which is a binary file) and reverse engineering.


right, and now that wont be an issue :D


Isn't reversre engineering illegal according to the flash EULA :confused:

Can't Adobe sue them for that :confused:

well now the EULA is kind of a moot point, now they can legally fork flash :D

[forrestcupp]

Does it matter? Right now, the normal flash player works correctly with youtube.
Aside from the fact that the proprietary Linux version of Flash has a lot of bugs that aren't being fixed because the community can't be involved, there's also the fact that Adobe doesn't give a rat's behind about compiling a 64-bit version. If an open source project has the capability of catching up because of open technology, it would be easy to compile a 64-bit version because we'd have the code.

I don't use Gnash because it's stuck back in version 7, but if Gnash catches up to Flash, I'd use it in a heart beat.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Yeh but as I said this points to now gnash can get what it needs to catch up so those with issues with adobe can be fully happy now

[geoken]

Isn't reversre engineering illegal according to the flash EULA :confused:

Can't Adobe sue them for that :confused:

No. The EULA only applies for reading the SWF file spec. If you go to Adobe's website and try to read the SWF spec you'll first need to agree to a EULA which says you won't use the spec to create an app that can read SWF files.

This is why gnash had to resort to simply decompiling an SWF. If gnash didn't care about violating EULA's they could easily go to Adobe's website and get the spec, then violate the EULA by basing their app around the info contained in that spec.

[eragon100]

Does gnash work with opera? Because personally, that's the only thing I care about :lolflag:

[SunnyRabbiera]

No. The EULA only applies for reading the SWF file spec. If you go to Adobe's website and try to read the SWF spec you'll first need to agree to a EULA which says you won't use the spec to create an app that can read SWF files.

This is why gnash had to resort to simply decompiling an SWF. If gnash didn't care about violating EULA's they could easily go to Adobe's website and get the spec, then violate the EULA by basing their app around the info contained in that spec.

yeh but with this that is no longer an issue :D

[swoll1980]

Yes unless silverlight takes over then were back to square 1

[Sunflower1970]

I hope this means Flash will work better under Linux. For the most part it works fine, except when I need to upload images to my photobucket account. They have started to use a Flash interface which doesn't work at all.

Also, some newspaper websites which has an option to upload photos with a person's classified ad uses Flash. Again, it doesn't work under Linux. (no matter how many times I told the developers they have to have a fallback, they just didn't care...GAHHH!)

[heartburnkid]

Does it matter? Right now, the normal flash player works correctly with youtube.

Gnash doesn't, so I don't use it. If they have problems with adobe I feel sorry for them,but I simply use what is best fit for the task. If that's a open-source program, so be it. If that's a closed-source program, so be it. As long as my computer works. It are my rights that are being restrained by proprietary licences, and I don't care about being able to modify the source code of a program :guitar:

It does matter. Adobe's Linux player is notoriously slow, buggy, and resource heavy (even more so than their Windows player, though that's no bed of roses either), and is i386 only. Opening the source would enable us to optimize it and port it like crazy-go-nuts.

[k99goran]

It does matter. Adobe's Linux player is notoriously slow, buggy, and resource heavy (even more so than their Windows player, though that's no bed of roses either), and is i386 only. Opening the source would enable us to optimize it and port it like crazy-go-nuts.
How many Ubuntu users actually bother to install Adobe (PDF) Reader today?
I think Adobe Flash Player will go the same way. And I personally long for the day when we can take flash support for granted. :)

[swoll1980]

How many Ubuntu users actually bother to install Adobe (PDF) Reader today?
I think Adobe Flash Player will go the same way. And I personally long for the day when we can take flash support for granted. :)

+1

[SunnyRabbiera]

How many Ubuntu users actually bother to install Adobe (PDF) Reader today?
I think Adobe Flash Player will go the same way. And I personally long for the day when we can take flash support for granted. :)

well I usually install it so I can view PDF files in my browser for quick access

[geoken]

well I usually install it so I can view PDF files in my browser for quick access

I do to. I use PDF's for accurate document interchange (sending to a printer who only want's PDF, etc.) and Evince fails at this task. I've noticed several rendering glitches in Evince. And before anyone says maybe Adobe's doing it wrong, I checked against kpdf and it's results were consistent with Adobe.

[forrestcupp]

Does gnash work with opera? Because personally, that's the only thing I care about :lolflag:

flashplugin-nonfree works with the latest beta of Opera. You just have to go to Opera's website and download the Ubuntu deb for it.

[drascus]

i dont think they truly intend to make good on this promise.

[geoken]

i dont think they truly intend to make good on this promise.

LOL.

They already have. If you go to the page that houses the SWF spec you can now use it without agreeing to any licenses (like you previously had to)

[SunnyRabbiera]

LOL.

They already have. If you go to the page that houses the SWF spec you can now use it without agreeing to any licenses (like you previously had to)

Yup, lookie:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/

No EULA to be seen now :D

[zmjjmz]

Next up is porting their CS to Linux.
You can do it Adobe.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Next up is porting their CS to Linux.
You can do it Adobe.

well even if its closed source having photoshop and stuff more supported on linux is a great thing indeed.
I dont care if Photoshop stays proprietary, if its supported and at a semi decent price I would buy it :D

[zmjjmz]

I also think that this will greatly help flash creation tools for Linux.
Maybe I don't care if CS is ported (I just wanted Flash MX >.>)

[geoken]

I also think that this will greatly help flash creation tools for Linux.
Maybe I don't care if CS is ported (I just wanted Flash MX >.>)

What will help flash creation tools is the new XFL file format. Really, a flash creation tool wouldn't be hard to build but most devs are looking at it from the wrong point of view. Rather than offering a simple interface that merely translates there actions to .as behind the scenes and uses an already available compiler they have all been trying to compile their own SWF's directly. A simple port of muSprite (http://musprite.sourceforge.net/) with more refined drawing tools and auto compiling (to an existing compiler) would probably be relatively easy to develop and all that anyone would want.