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Macromedia Applies For OSI Certification
mpawlo writes "As reported by Greplaw, Macromedia, the company behind Flash-technology and more, has applied for open source certification of one of its licenses. The Macromedia license is based on the IBM Public License.
You can see the
Application for certification as well as the
The Macromedia licence."
Maybe an open source Shockwave plugin won't run like molasses on Linux...
They will probably just distribute a 'reference implementation', much the same as Fraunhofer did with mp3 encoding/decoding. That is, unoptimizied but easy to see what is going on. They make their money on having a good Flash 'encoder' anyway, so ..
Perhaps this means we can stop sayign "Vector graphics, schmecter graphics, it's proprietary, and therefore evil, and therefore shouldn't be used, q.e.d."
Hopefuly this is Macromedia's first step in porting some of their products to Linux. I'm sure that many developers are wishing that dreamweaver/flash woudl be available on linux. It would olso be a good step forward on getting the visual programmers/designers to hop onto linux.
Im sure we wont see open source flash any time soon, (or ever), but could be a step to see some great programs to open source platforms.
This sig was cut off by the sla
There were plenty of companies back in the old days that did not support Linux. And yet that is understandable because in all honesty, it didn't make much sense financially to support linux (ask Id software about this, they've been behind linux forever.) Now however, times have changed. For the first time ever, supporting linux may not be a burden, but something that is actually 'pretty cool' (how good linux is to a company financially is still beyond us.)
As linux users, it is not in our place to slap the wrists of those that did not support us in the past. But too rather sit here and help them. I for sure welcome Macromedia into the OSS arena. While I too have yet to see the outcome, I'm sure any thing the contribute will be greatly . appreciated.
(And when you think about it, you come to the realization that Macromedia is a far better company than Adobe. And if you thought about it some more, you'd realize Adobe is even worse than Microsoft is.)
Sunny
What are you talking about? My recollection is that they have had a Flash plugin for Linux for many years now, despite the fact that I'm sure it hasn't made them one dime. What they've done for Linux far outweighs anything you and your slobbering Slashdot buddies have done, I'm sure of that.
Why do you assume this is about Flash when the person submitting the email to the discusiion list is working on CFML Language Development?
Do you know anything the general public does not know, or are you just jumping to conclusions? (Understandable, the wish is the father of the thought.)
Don't blame the bloat on the file format. SWF files are neck-and-neck with large animated GIFs since they're vector-based and use outline fonts; and a simple drop-down menu in Flash is very compact code compared with roll-over GIFs in DHTML layers. I've built both. If you're Microsoft and you can cram your creative designer's chosen font into the OS, then DHTML *text* layers are extremely compact, but everyone else trying to use a corporate font should find SWFs smaller.
Macromedia's own global nav movie with three fonts and a text box is all of 12.2 kB (the static GIF version may be smaller but has no rollovers). BTW, most users never realize such "quiet" animations are Flash, it's the James Bond-movie-trailer-on-acid intros that you can only do in Flash that give it the Flashy reputation.
Hey, use whatever works for you; Macromedia Dreamweaver is a fine tool for developing cross-browser DHTML animations, as is vim.
=S
Some people use linux because it is better the other OSs. Some people use it because it is free-as-in-beer.
For the people who use it because it is better, the macromedia authoring tools are better then the tools that currently exist for unix/linux (ie, none save for programatic creation).
If the win and mac versions of director come from a common code base, esp if they have an OS X version then the code is already writen with cross platform portability in mind. If thats the case then it would be relativly trivial to do the port to linux.
But the ultimate problem is that web desiginers desigine for IE, which means they test with IE. Which means there running IE on a MS OS. Unitl webdesiginers are actualy using linux then there wont be a market.
What software are they open sourcing? The artical on greplaw is shorter then the slashdot blurb. I'm assuming they're opening the flash plug in. Anything else?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I used to be a dotbomb manager and one of my employees loved using CF. Looked cool. Anyway, after getting laid off I figured I'd go with PHP for consulting work (no CF on Linux, you see) and I haven't looked back.
The thing that clicked for me was the fact that I could get documentation, textbooks and all the source easily with PHP. I suppose if CF is moving more to an open-source model that things might improve for Macromedia too. Who knows?
Anyway, thank you. That was very insightful and I hope the moderators recognise your comment as such (if you care about such things).
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
I've read it. I don't agree with it. You can argue quite reasonably that the APSL increases the amount of open source software because it requires that any distribution -- even in-house -- requires publication of the source code.
What is important about the freedom to program? That you be free to modify and redistribute. But the GPL forces a requirement on those who would modify. The GPL imposes a cost that you must redistribute source to anyone who gets a binary. The APSL imposes a cost that you must redistribute source to anyone if you deploy a binary. The difference is that you have the freedom to make proprietary changes to your code. Why is RMS arguing that this is a good thing??? Proprietary is suddenly good? What happened to him?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If you don't see a lot of people with the plug-in, you probably aren't looking. ;-)
There are an estimated 167 million installations of version 2 of Adobe's viewer (it's bundled with Acrobat Reader 5). Most people just don't realize that they have it. When I show people SVG stuff, they've usually had the viewer installed.
That aside, I agree; Macromedia's move strikes me as lip-service. But it'd be nice to see more competition in that space, if it comes off.
This is correct, but it is a long shot from being "look but don't touch", as the original poster states.
Keep in mind the GPL isn't exactly virginal on this point, as it makes absolutely no clarification whatsoever as to the difference between a lone programmer and a corporation--I.E., if a corp develops something GPLed inhouse, and a programmer gets pissed and just before quitting releases this inhouse package to the world in violation of his contract, does the world have the right to use that package, or did the lone programmer not have the right to redistribute the package because he was not himself a licensee? Everyone seems to have a slightly different opinion on this point.
The GPL stating that individuals may keep their own, nondistributed work private is a good, important feature. However it is tainted by failure to clarify whether, if groups wish to keep their own, nondistributed work private, they have any redress or legal ability to keep that private if the source code is stolen and redistributed.