*PS. Sorry for the typo. The last sentence should read: Expecting things to be the other way round is futile, in my opinion.
2009/3/27 Juan Pablo Califano <[email protected]> > >>> > Generally speaking free software development has often > less resources, so it's easier for a content producer to > be friendly with free software that the other way around. > >>> > > Strk, > > > > I think that sums up the problem here. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but what > you're expecting is not realistic: you're almost asking developers to lower > the bar to accommodate to a product basically out of pity. It’s not a > sustainable model. > > > > I don’t know much about non-Adobe players, honestly, but I do believe it’s > impressive what the Gnash guys have achieved so far. I mean it. But, at > best, such a project just has a distant chance to keep up with the official > player. And that chance is rather remote as anyone can see. There are many > reasons for that, but a few ones that come to mind are: > > > > 1) It’s obviously extremely hard to keep up with a big corporation that not > only has enormous resources to invest, but also sets the standard and leads > the development of that software. By definition, that means anyone trying to > make a clone open source player will have to struggle just not fall behind > too much. You’ll always be following other’s steps. > > > > 2) The motivation for a free flash player is rather mild. You already have > the official player for free. True, it’s not entirely open source, but some > parts of it are (Tamarin), reportedly works better than any other player in > Linux and certainly in other platforms (Windows and Mac). Compare it with > Mono, for instance. I personally think .NET is great, and if you want to run > .NET apps in any platform other than Windows, well, you don’t have an > official runtime. So Mono makes sense if you’re running Linux (or even Mac) > and you want to use .NET. Note, too, that even though Mono is funded by > Novell and is lead by a very talented and known OS engineer, they have > managed to implement .NET 2.0 and some features of 3.5, not the complete > runtime (again, because it’s damn hard to keep up). Nevertheless, that > project has better chances altogether, because it has way more resources, > and there’s a stronger motivation for it. Also note that almost nobody > installs Mono on Windows – apart from MS .NET not being open source, why > would you use Mono instead if you have MS runtime already available for > free? > > > > About MS Word / OpenOffice, again, that’s a different scenario. Word is not > only a tool to produce content but also a viewer/player; it’s both things. > So, if you don’t have Word and you didn’t have OpenOffice and someone gives > you a .doc file, you’re pretty much screwed (maybe MS has some “viewer” for > docs, not sure, but even if it does, most people are not aware of it). > OpenOffice definitely solves a problem for many people who can’t or don’t > want to use MS’s product. > > > > I think there lies the reason why projects like MTASC, FlashDevelop, Haxe, > etc, have had success. Because, if you want to produce content for the flash > player, those are great and free tools (both in “free as in freedom of > speech” and “free as in free beer” sense). People use them not mainly > because you can tweak them if you want, but because they’re great (in many > aspects, even better than their official counterparts) and they’re usable > for real work today. They are competitive and suit lots of developers’s > needs nicely. > > > > So, again, this may sound hard, but if you’re trying to make or clone a > platform, and you want to be realistic about it, you should be the one > supporting that platform’s features, rather than asking other people to > lower the bar to support you. You should accommodate to your users, not ask > your users to accommodate to you. Expecting things to be the other way round > is not futile, in my opinion. > > > > Cheers > > Juan Pablo Califano > > > 2009/3/27 strk <[email protected]> > > On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 03:10:07PM +0100, Stefano Sabatini wrote: >> >> > which kind of problems make gnash/$your_preferred_free_flash_player >> > not able to support AS3 (I mean lack of specifications, licensing >> > issues, technical, whatever)? >> >> Development effort at this stage (time, money). >> >> Generally speaking free software development has often >> less resources, so it's easier for a content producer to >> be friendly with free software that the other way around. >> >> Just think .doc files. It's kind of easy nowadays to read >> them (thanks openoffice) but a few years ago wasn't it damn >> stupid to have to fight with .doc files containing *very* >> simple text only information ? (still is stupid, just less >> proving). >> >> You can do wonderful things even with an SWF4, ever seen >> the orisinal games [1] ? >> >> [1] http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/. >> >> --strk; >> >> Free GIS & Flash consultant/developer () ASCII Ribbon Campaign >> http://foo.keybit.net/~strk/services.html /\ Keep it simple! >> >> _______________________________________________ >> osflash mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org >> > >
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