I believe part of the issue is the difficulty of conceding the matter when it comes to workarounds (designed to bring people in a broken, non-free environment to parity of experience with everyone else) and still holding the line when it comes to enhancements that should have a freely available underpinning. Which, if I understood correctly, was the nature of the original suggestion. That kind of situation could lead us to dependency on proprietary software, or force people with a hardcore approach to freedom in their own environment to accept that they can only get an inferior experience. And what's a workaround or an enhancement may fluctuate in different contexts.
Anyway, if you want to know better what the board's position was or is, understand the rationale for it, evaluate if a particular deployment would raise concerns, or make the case for a change, I would suggest starting with Kat Walsh. She has as good a grasp of the issues here as anyone on the board, and her views would carry weight with other board members. --Michael Snow Michael Dale wrote: > If that is in fact the present board stance it should A) It should be > stated somewhere and B) be lobbied to be changed. > > The only statements I have seen from the board had to do with free > formats. What do free formats have to do with targeting propitiatory > applet interpreters? > > If Danese is interpreting something specific she should point us to that. > > There are complete free tool-chains for flash applet code, compilation, > and runtime. > > It would be complicated to construct such a rule without going against a > lot of what we are already doing. Ie We have lots of custom IE markup > and javascript workarounds. Hence we are targeting a proprietary > interpreter. The Cortado video applet for example also has custom code > to support MS Java VM etc. > > If free software flash applet code gets read by a propitiatory applet > and it helps give a large set of users an experience that is nearly > identical to the free software solution, then I really see no problem > with that, and its not very different from what we area already doing. > > A flash applet as transitional technology to support older browsers > should be understood as very similar to 'making javascript work in IE'. > If instead you relied on some proprietary sub-system of IE to achive the > same thing with custom js/ actionsScript its really not that different. > > Of course feature and experience parity with free software solutions is > a good rule to have. Which maybe what is being referenced here? > > And using free formats for audio/ video is of course very important and > something I have supported for years. > > peace, > --michael > > > > > On 09/17/2010 02:42 PM, Neil Kandalgaonkar wrote: > >> I agree with you completely, that Flash is useful as a transitional >> technology. But I got a very firm no from Danese who is interpreting >> what the Board has said in the past. >> >> There was a thread on Wikitech-L about this (you were probably >> distracted at the time due to family stuff). >> >> http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg08550.html >> >> >> On 9/17/10 2:25 PM, Michael Dale wrote: >> >>> On 09/17/2010 12:24 PM, Neil Kandalgaonkar wrote: >>> >>>> Discussions about using closed source tools are not taboo. Not at >>>> all, I >>>> think we should continue to review decisions about tools. I myself have >>>> raised questions about (for instance) our decision to never use Flash, >>>> even if we use a 100% free toolchain. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> I don't think we were ever against flash player as part of a tool set to >>> widely support free formats. >>> >>> Flash is widely deployed consistent applet environment, there is no >>> reason to avoid supporting it if it helps distribute ~free~ content. For >>> example we have had brief talks of adding flash svg viewer so that IE >>> users could better interact with SVG files. And you can be sure that >>> once adobe ships native support for WebM it will provide much better >>> experience for IE visitors to view free format videos than the >>> fragmented java VM ecosystem that cortado has to run in. >>> >>> The foundation has only had a position of support for free formats, it >>> has to my knowledge never stated any position against proprietary >>> clients viewing free content or open source applets in proprietary >>> platforms. Most of our visitors use IE after all. >>> >>> --michael >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Commons-l mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l >>> > > > _______________________________________________ > Commons-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l > > _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
