Open source was one of the options we considered. However although it is a reasonable option for a standalone piece of software, the Maps API for Flash has significant dependencies on Google infrastructure and services that make this impractical.
Many of these services expose data that is licensed from third parties and subject to strict branding, attribution, and anti-scraping requirements and measures. There is no way we can open source the API for Flash and maintain those protections. In addition, the build and release process for the Maps API for Flash is extremely tightly coupled to Google internal build tools, libraries, and processes. Untangling all of these dependencies would take a significant amount of engineering investment. Finally, the serving infrastructure for the dependencies of the API would need to be maintained, and backwards compatibility requirements for those dependencies would need to be enforced long term. These two requirements amount to a significant portion of the ongoing cost of offering the API, so committing to this would undermine our goals for deprecation (to free up resources to work on the JS API). Consequently we concluded that open sourcing the API is not a feasible option for us. Many thanks, Thor. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API For Flash" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-maps-api-for-flash/-/Hd0LpErPZMgJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api-for-flash?hl=en.
