For years I waited patiently for the development tools to match what I was used to and with the last release I really got my hopes up. It is clear that a real serious attempt was made. Though a lot of good features and capabilities were added, Unless that cycle was somehow a rare exception in some way to how things are usually done, It's clear that MM just doesn't have the ability to solve the problem of creating a good development environment for flash by itself. Worse yet, a lot of time was wasted waiting( about 2 years for the release and another 1 for debugging) before folk gave up and decided that they need to create their own tools.
The move to eclipse is a great one. If you open up the development environment and compiler I think you'll rapidly find the sort of "average programmer" adoption that is needed to move to the next level. Because there will be opportunities to create new tools for the system. And you will still be able to sell components and tools for it (when I say open source I obviously don't mean necessarily free). Determine what areas you want to own and compete for them, but tell everybody what you are NOT doing so that someone else will. And provide the tools and information for folk to integrate with what you do.
The problem is that currently anytime that MM makes a mistake, time is lost for good. If the compiler tools were to open up then if MM makes a mistake with it's components there will be a few others too choose from right away and the whole community can move on to building better software rather than struggling along with bad choices from years ago.
As far as the player goes, I'm not sure. There are too many numbers and subtle issues that I'm not aware of. My instinct is that MM should maintain control of the runtime. I'm much more concerned about fragmentation with the runtime and that MM has a good moneystream than that every embeded linux device has a flash runtime. I would like to see a version of the flash player that executes on a jvm to help get the player on more operating systems more easily and to push some of the issues of fragmentation from different hardwares on to the shoulders of the jvm. I also think that that would provide other opportunities for mm as well.
But I am certain that the time is right to make the development tools for flash all open source. The animation and simple game or educational toy markets may be well enough served by the current set of tools for the next 5 years, but the development tools have just fallen way too far behind the norm for decent sized applications. There is no way to catch up now without going open source and providing the open source developers with as much as possible to help them out. It may end up even being too late now, but the new player's capabilities,. together with the faith that folk have in open source, might actually reinstate some momentum and keep Flash competitive.
I'm really hoping that this is somewhere allong the lines of where you are going.
Thanks for asking.
-Cort
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