Re: [Gnash-dev] Opportunity for gnash corporate development on netbooks?

[Rob Savoye]

Jason Guiditta wrote:
> Just saw this (admittedly not brand new) article, which talks about a
> company called bsquared porting flash lite to run on an upcoming dell
> netbook.
> http://gizmodo.com/5242898/dell-android-netbook-its-coming

  Yes, I'm familiar with Bsquared. They're porting the Adobe v10 to
embedded platforms, basically getting rid of Flash Lite, which has
always been somewhat limited. I've talked to several company's also
talking to Bsquared.

> I tried to post a comment similar to the following on gizmodo, but it kept
> giving me an error.  This seems like a perfect opportunity to get some
> funding for gnash, since it is already designed to run on so many
> platforms.  If a big company like Dell is willing to pay to get flash
> well-supported on their netbook, why could that player not be gnash?  I know
> you guys are doing that summer of code to get 9/10 support, but it might be
> worth trying to find a contact at dell to see if this is something they
> would help sponsor.  I have no idea where to begin there, just seems like it
> could give the project a boost, maybe someone on the list could help find a
> contact or something.

 We'd need a contact at a sufficiently high level. Of the companies I
know using BSquared's promised flashplayer for ARM, MIPS, etc... have
decided they'd rather spend hundreds of thousands of $$$ for the
Bsquared solution, than give much smaller amounts to Gnash, which
already runs on the ARM and Android. Big companies that prefer
proprietary software seems to prefer to give business to each other,
regardless pf the much higher price tag. Of the few machines I've played
with the Bsquared plugin on, it usually hung the browser in seconds, and
many other stability problems. But I guess they'll get it right
eventually...

  I also talked to Google about Gnash for Android several times, but
they don't appear to be interested in the slightest. Unfortunately, the
only people willing to support Gnash with any funding are people that
believe strongly in free software solutions already. To those people, I
can't thank you enough!

        - rob -