Nicolas, I found a couple presumptions that I believe are wrong.
1. "Let's say that another company makes another Flash Player that =20 is not compatible. Which user on the planet would ever install it ?? =20 And for which reason ?? And which company would ever produce content =20= for it ??" Well companies like Microsoft and CISCO love that kinda mentality. It =20= preys right into their agendas. Of course people would lintel it! You =20= know why? Because companies like Microsoft would force their version =20 of their flash player to be bundled with IE for example. Hardware =20 vendor's like Dell, might do the same thing and then you will find =20 yourself in a world with different players that may not operate the =20 same way. How is that beneficial to the community? Individuals in the =20= Flash community make a hard-working living developing for a platform =20 that they know has a broad and uniform reach across the top 3 most =20 popular platforms in the world. It is that assurance that has =20 assisted in the growth of Flash Platform professional development =20 community. And let's not forget that Flash content runs on 99% of all =20= of the systems out there and it's that unformed ubiquity that allows =20 community members to reap the professional( as consultants, =20 architects, developers, designers, etc ) benefits of said arrangement. 2. Sun... I'm glad you brought Java into this. Because Java is a perfect =20 example of what can go wrong. Java while open source ( this is recent =20= Java was not open source before ), has different VMs for different =20 Platforms. We all know that Java 6 is here... but you know what? If =20 your a Mac user your screwed. Why? Well mac Java developers have to =20 wait until Apple get's a Java 6 VM running on OS X. The current JAva =20 6 VM is outdate is several revisions behind the current one? Now I =20 ask you Nicolas, what is the benefit in that? Who is that helping? Also if you look closely Sun makes a lot of money off of licensing =20 Java for Mobile devices. Do you think that stopped when Java went =20 open source? Of course not. Even though the project is till open =20 source you still have to pay license fee's if you want the VM on your =20= embedded device. 3. Adobe... Adobe is not so much concerned about people reading swf files. They =20 just don't want you to create a player that can play back swf =20 content. I personally don't see anything wrong or evil about that. =20 In fact Adobe is actually encouraging people to create tools that can =20= work with the swf format. The Flash Assembler spec that was released =20 not too long ago is evidence of that. The document is actually geared =20= to compiler writers and that's a good thing. Open source is a wonderful thing, but like any other solution it is =20 not a blanket one and should not be treated as such. cheers, Sam On Aug 2, 2007, at 8:09 AM, Rákos Attila wrote: > > Just remember Microsoft JVM - Java even today suffers from that and > this was one of the most important reasons why Java couldn't be the > most widespread client side technology. And also this helped Flash a > lot to reach its today's position :) > > Attila > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > =-=-=-=-=-= > From: Nicolas Cannasse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Open Source Flash Mailing List <[email protected]> > Date: Thursday, August 2, 2007, 10:11:05 AM > Subject: [osflash] SWF9 and FLV File Format Spec released > --====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====---- > ====----===-- > Samuel Agesilas a écrit : >> Adobe did not have a choice on that one... they had to add that >> clause in there in order to keep the Flash Player from getting broken >> into smaller incompatible players. This way they have a player that >> is guaranteed to play the SWF file format. Imagine going to one site >> that uses one type of player to play swf content then you head to >> another site that uses another player. Users would be downloading 10 >> different Flash Players just to view content on the web. Not too >> mention some players would be platform specific leaving other users >> out in the cold. > > This is just completely wrong. > > Let's say that another company makes another Flash Player that is not > compatible. Which user on the planet would ever install it ?? And for > which reason ?? And which company would ever produce content for it ?? > > Now let's talk about your "platform specific" sentence. If there is > one > player that is "platform specific", that's the official one. It was > only > supporting Windows and Mac not so long time ago (Linux was wayyy > behind). Now, Linux support is great but there are still a lot of > platforms that would need a FlashPlayer. > > For example, if a company want to run one of its Flash games on > Nintendo > DS, it would be nice to have a Flash Player here. But they can't write > one that support only basic features by using the specs. That's just a > plain limitation of what you can do with your datas. > > Let's imagine one second that someone did the same thing with an image > format : you can produce images with this format but you can't write a > program that read them. WTF ?? Flash being an artist creation tool, > SWF > format should be free from any stupid restrictions. > > The real reason behind that is that Adobe is selling licenses of the > Player for mobile devices, and they are using this kind of trick to > lock > out another companies that might want to do the same. > > That might be also a move to keep the full control of the the SWF > specification. But if you look at Sun and Java (which > specifications are > entirely open) there are other ways do it in a more open manner. > > Anyway, thinking that such restrictions are here to protect the > users is > just thinking the wrong way. I'm surprise to see such thinking on an > OpenSource mailing list... Restrictions on using your datas will > always > be restrictions. Maybe because of the way you are using your datas, > you > don't care, but others do. > > Now, that's a false problem, since from the old times of FP4-5, before > any spec was released, people have been reverse engineering the SWF > format in an open maner. Technologies such as MTASC, haXe or our > Obfuscator have been developed this way, and some unrestricted > documentations are available on the internet. If I didn't use the time > to do that, MTASC would simply have never existed ! > > The only problem it causes is when major features are added (such as > AVM2 in FP9), it's a lot of work to be able to understand the > meaning of > each byte. But it's just a few weeks of work, and then you're done. > What's the meaning of leaving such restrictions in that context ? > > Nicolas > > > _______________________________________________ > osflash mailing list > [email protected] > http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > =-=-=-=-=-= > > > _______________________________________________ > osflash mailing list > [email protected] > http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
