[Gnash] Fwd: [Fsfe-uk] BBC's DRM Iplayer windows only

[Dave Crossland]

Hi,

There was a discussion on the FSFE-UK list today complaining about how
Gnash was unstrategic for the free software movement and
SVG+ECMAscript would be better. Which is nonsense, of course. Perhaps
this list will find my post interesting, and I hope you all can tell
me if I'm mistaken on anything :-)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dave Crossland <address@hidden>
Date: 7 Jan 2008 17:52
Subject: Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC's DRM Iplayer windows only
To: address@hidden


On 07/01/2008, Noah Slater <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 05:08:11PM +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > Please show me the URL that disproves me that you seem to be aware of :-)
>
> Meh, I'm happy to argue in ignorance of the facts. ;)

When Adobe was betting on SVG as a Flash killer, it could have been.
That Adobe bought Macromedia was IMO chiefly for Flash; which
demonstrates to me that it would have been more expensive for Adobe to
develop SVG into Flash killer than buy Flash.

The limited resources of the free software movement are therefore
better spend on making a free Flash runtime and developer tools.

Gnash is sponsoring Ming, lets not forget, which will underlie content
creation tools, Flame being the first example since Macromedia
Captivate is a small subset of Flash focused on a useful purpose.

PDF was controlled by Adobe and recently became an ISO standard.
MS-DOC was so bad that ODF became an ISO standard instead, and MS is
now fighting that tooth and nail. Flash is a technically sound
multimedia platform. Adobe has said that it tightly controls Flash
runtimes for the same reason Sun kept a grip on Java runtimes: because
"works the same on all runtimes" is compelling.

Given that there are several Flash runtimes in development as free
software, and given that the are free and run nicely on GNU+Linux they
will be appearing in many embedded computers in 2009, it would make
sense for Adobe to make Flash a "open" standard at ISO or similar, so
that all clients can work towards ISO compliance and the "write many
run many" apocalypse is avoided.

If the don't, perhaps Gnash will become a "defacto" Flash standard,
and not the Adobe runtime, because freedom matters to embedded
hardware vendors who together (and certainly some on their own) dwarf
Adobe in the total economy.

--
Regards,
Dave