On 10/29/07 4:51 PM, Brendan Eich wrote:
> On Oct 29, 2007, at 3:06 PM, Neil Mix wrote: > >>> What would Adobe and Mozilla possibly have to make a "deal" >>> concerning? >>> Its probably the case that the head decision makers of Mozilla and the >>> head decision makers at Adobe have never met each other, much less >>> made >>> a "deal". >>> >> >> I'll play devil's advocate for a moment, and say "Tamarin". It goes >> like this: someone claims Adobe and Mozilla are in cahoots, and that >> triggers the memory that Adobe open-sourced its AS engine to Mozilla, >> and then the wheels start turning. It's a lazy thought process, of >> course, because what's really gained? Did they team up to make sure >> the spec results in as little modification to Tamarin as possible? >> So they're teaming up out of laziness? I don't get it either, but >> you asked. > > As the press release > <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/mozilla-2006-11-07.html> noted, Tamarin > was open-sourced to share effort and accelerate development (and inform > specification!) of a sound, implementable, high-performance ES4. I think I can > say that without speaking too much for Adobe. > Yes, you can. And its still true. > > Also, and this is edgier: it's not as if Macromedia (remember, it was > Macromedia who developed the VM originally) wanted to bear the cost of a > high-performance VM all by itself. To add relevant information at the risk of > dishing a rumor (sue me), I heard that Macromedia originally tried to license > an existing small VM, and started on what became Tamarin only after being > denied that license. > True or not, I¹m sure glad Adobe was denied that option. Open standards and open vms will work out better for Adobe customers and web users in general. > > I'll also testify, as an outsider with no interest in Adobe, that the Adobe > (originally Macromedia) employees on TG1 have always worked from shared > principles and evidence to reach better design decisions, without regard for a > corporate agenda. In particular, they've been willing to develop changes -- > even if those changes inflicted incompatibilities on ActionScript users. I've > heard this came at some political cost inside Adobe; it's not hard to imagine > marketeers and evangelists there who might prefer a rubber-stamp. > Thanks Brendan. > > But ES4 is not AS3, and it differs enough > (see http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=clarification:adobe_as3) that the > claim that Adobe is forcing something it owns, without thoughtful changes, > through a rubber-stamp process, is demonstrably false. (Rubber-stamped > standards exist; you may have heard of OOXML?) > > Of course Adobe desires to standardize, even at the cost of incompatibility. > Reduced developer brainprint from variant dialects of JS is in their interest, > and in their developers' interest. How nefarious. > ³A rising tide lifts all boats². A better web will become a bigger web. This is good for Adobe, and just about everyone else on this list. Any questions? Jd > > /be > > > _______________________________________________ > Es4-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es4-discuss
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