Comments on: Re: The Open Web is Slow

By: Kevin Dangoor

Kevin Dangoor — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:50:07 +0000

@Nate: one thing to keep in mind is that Adobe does not get revenue from Flash Player directly, since it’s free. I do think Adobe has a fair bit to gain by opening the player, but I (as author of the article that started this) am not calling for Adobe to go as far as open sourcing their player. I’m saying that they should release the SWF spec under open terms so that others can make players.

@Tony: Yes, there *could* be multiple SWF player implementations out there. As long as Adobe stays on top of things, though, their implementation would undoubtedly lead the field by a wide margin. And note that, as is typical in open source, Adobe would retain the “Flash” name. You can’t call it Flash unless Adobe says you can. Much like the situation with Java today.

The point is for people to be able to try things out and use their own creativity to push the bounds of what can be done with a SWF.

@Alan: Wouldn’t Firefox being open source make it more susceptible to security attacks?

The more likely scenario is that security flaws will be noticed and patched more quickly.

I think there’s enough open source running in untrusted network environments at this point that one can’t reasonably make the argument that it will be less secure.

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:33:47 +0000

Wouldn’t open sourcing the flash player make it susceptible to security attacks?

By: Nate Chatellier

Nate Chatellier — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:37:31 +0000

@Tony: Yeah, you could argue the same thing about Qt, but the way the license is setup, you can’t get away with it. You might be able to steal the general algorithms and methodologies and rewrite everything from scratch, but with the fantastic integration of Adobe products, I think that the only people that could really compete with Adobe are already competing. Plus, again, Qt has managed to prevent this through their licensing scheme.

By: Tony Fendall

Tony Fendall — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:33:13 +0000

I think the main reason for this, is that if the flash player were open source, then someone could make a slightly modified version of the player.

Then suddenly we would have multiple versions of the player, and developers like us would have the same problems as those who have to deal with multiple browsers.

I agree with you that this could be worked around with the right license, but I still think this is the main reason for Adobe’s descision.