On 8/2/07, John Dowdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > We don't really want to assist any group that might happen to > fracture the public reliability of Player functionality. That's why the > quid-pro-quo for those docs specifies the agreements for its use, > as far as not creating runtimes or redistributing.
I do understand the concern to maintain reliability, but this seems to me like using a hammer to crack a nut and hitting your thumb instead. Don't projects like the FOSS Gnash project and the commercial Oregan Media Browser for PSP, which both lag substantially behind the official player in functionality, do more to "fracture" reliability than hypothetical players implementing the entire spec? Isn't the real result of this policy to inhibit any group from /improving/ the poor "public reliability of Player functionality", either by bringing fuller Flash support to platforms Adobe does not support or by implementing basic functionality that Adobe has so far failed to implement across all variants of the player - extremely basic functionality such as the Flash accessibility featureset. Currently (please correct me if this has changed), Flash only exposes content to assistive technology like screen readers through the standard APIs they use with its ActiveX plugin and Windows standalone player. It doesn't expose content to MSAA (the Microsoft Active Accessibility framework) from the Netscape-style plugin used in Firefox, nor to the Apple Accessibility API, nor to AT-SPI on the GNOME platform. Instead of spending their time universally implementing essential functionality for users whom Adobe has left behind, the Gnash team is stuck playing clean-room reverse engineering catch-up: > Unless somebody decides to donate a patch making the > Accessibility AS2 class actually do something, this will probably > be on the TODO list for some time... For one thing implementing > streaming video is a current top priority http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?105660 I do think there is something problematic about marketing Flash as an accessible format without either (1) doing the development legwork to make that more of a reality that or (2) allowing others to take up the baton. By contrast, PDF is an open specification, Adobe Reader is quasi-accessible to assistive technology on OS X, Windows, and GNOME, and some rival readers such as Apple Preview are usable with native assistive technology such as VoiceOver (and seems to be much preferred by VoiceOver users AFAICT) while others are open to patching: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=309015 I'm no lawyer, but instead of banning the development of alternative players, couldn't the licence require implementation of the full API for use of the "Flash" label in advertising and prohibit additions to the public API without consultation of Adobe? -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
