The Return of GPLFlash

ValourX writes "Remember GPLFlash, the free software project that was supposed to replace the proprietary Macromedia Flash plugin? Well it's back in active development according to this NewsForge article. GPLFlash is half of the proprietary duo that the Free Software Foundation is rallying to replace with free equivalents. The alpha release isn't far away, but the development team could use some programming help, if you're available."

Comments

Elaborate

[Quasar1999]

What kind of help? And more importantly, how are they making something compatable? Reverse engineering? I wouldn't want to be in the USA helping this effort... the DMCA could very well be used by macromedia to contain any third party renderers that may appear. They have a ton of money on the line...

Re:Elaborate

[FidelCatsro]

iirc Flash is an open standerd

Re:Elaborate

[Wm_K]

SWF is an open format as far as I know, you can find the documentation of the format on the Macromedia website. There are quite a few GPL SWF creation tools also.

Re:Elaborate

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, like, RTFA and stuff?

"So when can we expect a usable release of GPLFlash2? "To make an alpha release," Choquet said, "we need to improve the following things:

* Improve external resources support, so the player may redirect to a location or use external data
* Implement keyboard inputs
* Fix button problems
* Have an ActionScript engine that works. ActionScript libraries may not be completed, but the engine should work.
* Make the plugin more robust, especially concerning fonts and memory allocation
* Fix the configure file and the makefile so everything will get installed properly on different GNU/Linux distros"

A usable Flash player should be available soon. "Given the amount of work, I don't expect any kind of preliminary release before the end of June or July. If we don't do that before we make an alpha release, people will be disappointed as they will not see any benefits compared to GPLFlash."

Groth added that more development help will produce a complete, free Flash player and plugin in a shorter amount of time. Interested developers can contact Groth and Choquet through the GPLFlash mailing list."

Re:Elaborate

[MS-06FZ]

Do they really lose money if someone else makes a compatible flash player? They give the player away. They make their money by selling the authoring tools. It'll take more than even free authoring tools to be a threat, as long as their tools are better. There are a hell of a lot of people making flash stuff these days - ads, websites, cartoons, whatever - it's worth it to a designer to spend the money to get a tool they're happy with, rather than struggle with a free tool.

Re:Elaborate

[IBeatUpNerds]

They have a ton of money on the line...

Yeah, definitely. At $0.00 per download for their flash plugin, a hit like this is really going to make them ache.

Re:Elaborate

[Chyeld]

Actually if you read the agreements through which that documentation is avaliable, you'll notice that they are provided with the intent of allowing you to create SWF, not play it.

Re:Elaborate

[pete-classic]

They lose money on every download, but they make up for it in the volume.

-Peter

Re:Elaborate

[Wm_K]

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/lice nsing/fileformat/license2.html You are indeed right...the license states

Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF

Developing a SWF player would probably mean breaking the license agreement. I don't think it means breaking the DMCA.

Re:Elaborate

[brontus3927]

Why should Macromedia care that someone is using a 3rd party renderer as a replacement to their free renderer? Now if somebody wrote a third party flash creation program, there would be problems

Re:Elaborate

[BeBoxer]

Actually if you read the agreements through which that documentation is avaliable, you'll notice that they are provided with the intent of allowing you to create SWF, not play it.

That point is in the article as well. But I have to admit, it makes no sense at all to me. As I understand it, Macromedia sells the Flash creation software. And they are perfectly OK with you using their specs to develop free competition for that product. And they give away the player, but if you develop a free competitor to that, they'll get pissed. WTF? That makes no sense at all to me. Can anybody think of a reason why they would structure the agreement that way?

Re:Elaborate

[Richard_at_work]

There are plenty of third party flash creation applications, Flash is a published standard, Macromedia just keep the current specification to themselves for a couple of months to give their own products a headstart.

Re:Elaborate

[soulhuntre]

"Why should Macromedia care that someone is using a 3rd party renderer as a replacement to their free renderer"

Compatability.

One reason Flash is so popular is that for complex interactions it is much, much easier to be sure your Flash app will "just work" across any OS with a MM flash player, regardless of browser.

If a number of players hit there will inevitably be bugs and flaws, meanign that now you cannot be sure your Flash app will behave the way it is supposed to. The usefulness of the format will drop.

And people don't usually know WHY there is a problem .. the will jsut start saying "Flash? It doesn't always work" not caring that its their "player" made of string and bubble gum that is the problem.

The thing is, the Flahs player is FREE. So the only reason to write this one is political, not technical.

Re:Elaborate

[AgNO3]

Adobe made a flash authoring program called LiveMotion. It died because, from what I hear from flash programers, it just was not as robust as flash. Lots of programs export swf files. After Effects, Combustion, Illustrator, Toonboom, and I am sure many manny others. The only thing flash has over these other programs at this point is the integration of actionscripts.

Re:Elaborate

[Chyeld]

Players control how flash is seen, not the creators.

Allowing alternative players (assuming they actually have a problem with it and it's not just a CYA laywer insert) means that you can no longer 'promise' objects created in Flash will appear the same everywhere.

Remove that promise, and the draw to use Flash, as opposed to any of the other alternatives out there, is less.

Plus, if the alternative is better than the official version then Macromedia loses control of the language if people should choose to 'embrace and extend' the protocol. Then Macromedia is forced to play catch-up.

Think what MS would do if they were free to release their own Flash player.

Re:Elaborate

[ValourX]

The thing is, the Flahs player is FREE. So the only reason to write this one is political, not technical

That's where you're wrong. If you have a 64-bit system, you can't use Flash. Well, maybe if you have 32-bit x86 binary compatibilit you can use it... if you have a 32-bit binary browser. You cannot use 32-bit libraries and plugins with a 64-bit application. So if your uname says AMD64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, or MIPS, the smug reply from Macromedia is "sorry 'bout your bad luck! Use Windows, buy an x86 machine!"

There are a lot of people who find this unacceptable. Therefore we have GPLFlash.

-Jem

Re:Elaborate

[CritterNYC]

The thing is, the Flahs player is FREE. So the only reason to write this one is political, not technical.

A GPLed Flash Player could be legally distributed with Firefox, Konqueror, Mozilla, etc. If there were a solid one available, I'd bundle it into the default Portable Firefox package rather than having to provide instructions on how to hack it in (and violate the Macromedia license agreement).

Re:Elaborate

[diegocgteleline.es]

What kind of help? And more importantly, how are they making something compatable? Reverse engineering?

What the fuck? Flash format is open, why reverse engineering? Flash format is just as open as, say, PDF. If nobody in the opensource community has not written a opensource flash viewer is OUR fault not theirs.

Mind you, I've been viewing some simple flash files through gstreamer thanks to swfdec. Why all this noise now?

Re:Elaborate

[tchernobog]

Reverse engineering?

Why do it the hard way?

Re:Elaborate

[LDoggg_]

And we should just trust our benevolent dictators that have yet to provide us with a shockwave plugin for linux?

Forget flash, a good chunk of its usefullness can be handled with simple AJAX. Where in the hell is shockwave for linux? How many more petitions and signatures does Macromedia need?

Re:Elaborate

[JVert]

Could you send me a link for the flash player for windows CE devices? PocketPC doesn't count.

Re:Elaborate

[DrXym]

Since when has any mainstream website cared about Linux? The answer is they don't. If some flash movie doesn't play on Linux, they'll say "ho hum" and let the Linux users live with broken flash, or recommend users use the official flash player.

If we took the attitude that there should be only one implementation of anything, there would be no Samba, Firefox, Ghostscript, or Wine

Besides flash is not rocket science. If there is buggy content, it is easy enough to run it in the official and open source player side by side and figure out what's wrong.

Re:Elaborate

[Malc]

uname didn't seem to work, but winver did.

My version of Windows has two IE links on the Start menu... a 64 bit and a 32 bit. I guess Flash does work on some 64-bit systems.

Re:Elaborate

[dave420]

if by "lots" you mean the few people out there who need to use flash on their unix boxes - it's not a great deal. I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, but clearly, the number of people using non-x86 hardware who would get upset about something as trivial as flash is clearly minimal.

Re:Elaborate

[QuantumG]

swfdec is good and all, but we're not just after a replacement viewer, we're after a replacement plugin so FireFox can ship with 100% free software. That means it has to support ActionScript and all that other junk.

Re:Elaborate

[SoupIsGood Food]

Compatibility

This is the idiocy of defacto standards instead of real standards. With OSS, a defacto standard can be influenced by everyone, and is openly documented and understood in the code.

Closed source defacto standards means porting to new platforms is a feat next to impossible (see a flash plugin that works with any of the PowerPC-based Amiga variants? Howabout with RISC-OS on Arm? Open BSD on a Zaurus? Just 'cuz you don't run that platform doesn't mean that the platform is useless. Even if only a few thousand people use the platform, it shouldn't mean they're locked out of what has become a standard for content delivery.

With a closed flash, you can't develop a browser that deoesn't ape IE or Moz's plugin architecture. You can't come up with a swank new way to edit, view or serve flash content. It sucks. Free flash is an answer, as is a replacement vector graphic animation system that's based around a carefully engineered standard, or at least a decent RFC.

SoupIsGood Food

Re:Elaborate

[thephotoman]

You're still using IE? And you're talking about doing so on Slashdot?

You're braver than I thought.

Re:Elaborate

[jpc]

last time I looked (and I think it changed from before) it was only a published standard if you agreed to only produce authoring tools, but not players. They charge quite a lot if you want to make a player for a new platform.

Re:Elaborate

[jpc]

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/lice nsing/fileformat/license2.html

"Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF."

No license to make a player there...

Re:Elaborate

[VAXGeek]

I would hate to cause a rupture in your reality distortion field, but I would say it is an extremely safe bet that more than 60% of /. users are (gasp!) using MSIE on Win32.

Re:Elaborate

[iminplaya]

I don't believe we have to worry about Macromedia anymore.

Re:Elaborate

[timbo234]

The thing is, the Flahs player is FREE. So the only reason to write this one is political, not technical

There are some practical reasons as well as political:
1) Distros can't package flash into a nice-easy-to-install package. Newbie users often find it extremely difficult to download, unpack and then run the installer. Also having it in the package management system means it can be easily updated when fixes come out and it can be used as a dependency in other packages.

2) Have to rely on Macromedia for bugs and security fixes - ie. no control of how quickly things get fixed. Also bugs which only affect Linux may get much lower priority than others because they only affect a small proportion of the userbase, this is double so for other platforms like solaris.

3) Have to rely on Macromedia deciding to continue supporting it - they may decide its not worth doing this for solaris, how many solaris machines are used for web browsing?

4) The only Linux distros they list as supported (http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/producti nfo/systemreqs/) is RH9 and RHEL3. The fact that it works on other distros is a matter of luck and if it stopped working there would be nothing we could do to change it.

Re:Elaborate

[Micah]

If a number of players hit there will inevitably be bugs and flaws, meanign that now you cannot be sure your Flash app will behave the way it is supposed to. The usefulness of the format will drop.

Wait .... are you telling me that if this existed, Flash would work less well, meaning that it would confuse more users, and eventually mean less Flash content on the Web????

Woo hoo! Best reason ever to join this project! Sign me up!

Re:Elaborate

[BeBoxer]

That sounds like as good a guess as any. Thanks!

Re:Elaborate

[thephotoman]

Actually, I was pointing out that here on /., it's just not a good idea to admit to it. There are trolls, after all, that would have your head for not using Firefox/Opera/name your browser here that isn't IE.

Just because I do everything in my power to avoid that garish piece of crap doesn't mean everybody has the luxury of doing so.

Re:Elaborate

[Goth Biker Babe]

If you have a 64-bit system, you can't use Flash.

So if your uname says AMD64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, or MIPS, the smug reply from Macromedia

Err...

glamdring:~ melanie$ uname -a
Darwin glamdring.local 8.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.1.0: Tue May 10 18:16:08 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.1.5.obj~4/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc

And my browser plug-ins page reads...

Shockwave Flash 7.0 r24 -- from file "Flash Player.plugin".

I can't be arsed to start up my SGI and see what that says. But I don't think Macromedia will say what you're saying. Also if someone wants to pay for it I'm sure they'll quite happily develop a plug-in for anything you want.

Re:Elaborate

[ValourX]

Yes, but it's still 32-bit software on your PPC machine. And if you want a Flash Player for Linux on that machine, you're out of luck. That's even mentioned in TFA. In essence you've completely missed the point, possibly intentionally just so you can nitpick. I don't understand why people do this; perhaps you can explain it to me.

GPLFlash, any way you put it, is a good thing for people who want to run 64-bit operating systems... and for people concerned with software freedom.

-Jem

Re:Elaborate

[Malc]

I didn't say I was using it ;)

Firefox is a 32-bit app so it handles Flash on the 64-bit version of Windows too.

Re:Elaborate

[lisaparratt]

I've said this else where, but I'll say it again here: the only reason you'd want a 64 bit web browser is due to the flaws in the designs of 64 bit x86 instruction sets.

On most 64 bit capable processors, all code can use 64 bit registers and data transfers. Therefore a 32 bit web browser can use a 32 bit flash plug in, and both can perform 64 bit operations. This is faster than pure 64 bit, because it only needs to load 32 bit addresses from RAM.

On these platforms, the only reason you'd use a 64 bit browser and plugins is that they need to use over 2-4GB (dependent on platform). This is, to be frank, an exceptionally silly thing to do with a web browser, and would just slow it down.

Re:Elaborate

[ValourX]

No, that's not the only reason. On my 64-bit Opteron workstation with 64-bit Gentoo, I have to compile every browser plugin for 32-bit, or download precompiled 32-bit binaries for them. That's the PDF reader, Java, Flash, MPlayer, and RealPlayer. Three of those are 32-bit only anyway. So in order to view most Web media (aside from graphics), I have to have several workarounds for programs that are not 64-bit clean or have 64-bit binaries available. Performance doesn't matter as much as the integrity of the software stack and the ease with which it is maintained and updated. It's not hard to get a 32-bit binary of Firefox from Portage, but MPlayer and Java won't work with it because they're compiled for 64-bit. SUSE and Mandrake for AMD64 have everything compiled for 64-bit except OpenOffice.org -- so the situation is even worse there because everything is installed as a precompiled binary. The solution that I have on Gentoo now is to use 64-bit Mozilla and 32-bit Firefox, and switch between the two according to what I need to see on a Web site.

The way you're suggesting I do this is hacky and hard to maintain. And there's no good reason why there should not be 64-bit plugins for Acrobat, Flash, and RealPlayer -- at least, from a user standpoint.

-Jem

Re:Elaborate

[maxwell demon]

But then, couldn't they just make an extensive test suite and demand that no implementation may be claimed to play "flash" unless it passes that test suite completely?

BTW, how many people say "Oh, my browser just doesn't work" when they get to a page that doesn't display nicely? Actually they will say: "Oh, this web site is shitty, it doesn't even display correctly in the web browser."

However, independent of the license for the Flash specification I think having the name "Flash" in the project name is just asking for trouble (since "Flash" is surely trademarked).

Re:Elaborate

[Cwaig]

That's rubbish. Flash isn't an "open to interpretation" type of standard like HTML. It's all laid out on a fixed coordinate system. If you get an instruction that says "draw a 100x100 square at location 50 using the RGB colour FF:00:00" there's not that many ways to misinterpret it. It's all mathematical, and it you follow the ruleset (which is a hell of a lot simpler than the ones for HTML), you get the same result as Macromedia when rendering it.

Re:Elaborate

[ashot]

drivel.

Re:Elaborate

[RWerp]

So the only reason to write this one is political, not technical.

Or the fact there still is not Macromedia Flash player for amd64.

Re:Elaborate

[Goth Biker Babe]

But why would I want Linux on that machine, it's a Mac, and actually Tiger, which is 64 bit on G5s does support flash as does my SGI machine running IRIX.

The reason you can't have it on 64 bit linux is because of the naff Intel 64 bit architecture. You have to have all or nothing. I.e. you cannot have 32 bit code with 64 bit code. That is an Intel problem not a 64 bit problem.

Finally the reason why I am nitpicky is because the post to which I replied was essentially incorrect. Yes I know what he was trying to say but this is computing we're talking about it. You have to be accurate otherwise the information is worthless.

Finally 'software freedom' is a political aim. My aim is to have flexibility. At the moment I have machines running Linux, Windows XP and OS-X all of them have both Java and Flash. I didn't have to pay for either. When demand requires it there will be flash on 64 bit on Intel.

If you want to write your own flash player then fine but 99.99% of the computing public couldn't give a monkeys about it so don't think it's some great political aim. Personally I think Stallman's a raving nutter who is still trying to live the sixties ideal. If he wants 'freedom' firstly he needs to find somewhere else to live.

Re:Elaborate

[lisaparratt]

If you actually paid attention, you'd realise that if the architecture was any good, there's absolutely no point in having the entire software stack 64 bit clean, and that it's inefficient in both terms of memory and CPU time.

This is why the majority of old school 64 bit workstations (The SGIs, etc. of this world) have all their apps compiled with 32-bit addressing. They have no problems interfacing with 32-bit librariesyet can still take useful advantage of the 64-bit architecture of the machines.

Only if you're doing protein folding, linking MAME with an optimising linker, or something requiring an equally huge amount of memory, would you actually compile full 64 bit.

Web browsers, etc. come no where near close to the memory requirements at which being 64-bit is an advantage on a well designed platform.

Re:Elaborate

[JThundley]

Not to mention that Macromedia's own flash plugin for Linux is dated, it still uses the Open Sound System and has ugly menus, and I'm sure it could be better overall if they tried harder.

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself :)

Re:Elaborate

[Bert64]

The kernel of Tiger may be 64bit, but the userland is not.. Otherwise you would need a seperate userland in order to run it on old 32bit machines, and tiger works perfectly well on my G4..
So your userland and browser are 32bit, and it's quite possible to run a 64bit kernel with a 32bit userland on AMD64, which is AMD's architecture not intel's..
As for IRIX, the flash plugin for IRIX is a very old version that won't play a lot of modern flash files, and macromedia won't update it so your irix machine will increasingly find files it can't play, whereas the gplflash plugin will compile and run on irix just fine.
IRIX is also a 64bit os (on appropriate hardware, most sgi's made in the last 12+ years are 64bit) with mostly 32bit userland.

Re:Elaborate

[True Grit]

You have to have all or nothing. I.e. you cannot have 32 bit code with 64 bit code. That is an Intel problem not a 64 bit problem.

Actually this isn't true. The X86 64bit CPU's have no problem running 32bit software while in 64bit mode, and the Linux kernel doesn't have a problem with this either, if you compile the kernel for 32bit support. You can easily run any 32bit software in 64bit mode right now, if the software is statically linked and thus has no need for run-time linkage. That is true because the problem is with the rest of the system, particularly the system linker that doesn't support the idea of multiple libraries (same version and name, just different bitness). So this problem is really with the system software (Linux/GNU), not the hardware. In time (not soon alas) this will be fixed with a new standard for Linux's file-system layout and system linker behavior (Debian has a proposal which would implement this called "bi-arch" - since it really is kind of like using 2 architectures at the same time).

Re:Elaborate

[EdelFactor19]

and what version of windows would this be?

Re:Elaborate

[JVert]

wtf? pocketpc has flash player. Windows CE flash player is some sort of magical unicorn rumored only to be seen after paying for the source code to run on your "platform". Why do I sound like I belive they are the same?

So Flash is good now?

[Timesprout]

Is it ?? Is it?? Tell me, I dont know what to think now after all the anti flash vitriol.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[ahaning]

Haven't you played Nanaka Crash?

Also, I'm as ticked off by overuse of Flash as the next person, but there are some clever things out there done in Flash.

On Windows, I'd suggest installing the latest IE Flash plugin and use Media Player Classic (apparently the Firefox plugin doesn't work).

Re:So Flash is good now?

[matt me]

>So Flash is good now? Flash is bad. But is that bad as in rad as in wicked as in good or bad as in inaccesible, inusuable and memory intensive?

Re:So Flash is good now?

[NitsujTPU]

No, flash still sucks.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[Mr Guy]

Bad as in "I'll take 'Things that happen after lights out in Prison' for 1000 Alex".

Re:So Flash is good now?

[Richard_at_work]

Flash is as bad as any other standard, its what assholes do with it that counts.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[823723423]

Why flash? especially when SVG and Firefox are starting to happen. Browser can do rich graphics without losing rich content. See Picture of browser rotated 30 degress And then there is ben goodgers demo of thumbnail history . See Thumbnail history Plus there's was that article a while back about Oconner commenting on the absent developers. For flash, like advertisement, if we do not notice it, maybe it will go away.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[KiloByte]

Now, who dared to mod the parent down? It is informative :p

To combat any accusations of posting flamebait, I'm asking you what _useful_ sites use Flash? On Slashdot, the only recurring name is Homestarr Runner -- and some people, me included, don't enjoy it.
This leaves Flash adverts at like 10% of webpages, and shooting them down is a good reason to keep yourself from installing Flash, or getting Flashblock if you insist on having it.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[christopher240240]

Flash is fast. Flash is cool. Francois c'est pas flashe non due. And you don't stop. Sure shot. Go out to the parking lot. And you get in your car and you drive real far. And you drive all night and you see a light. And it comes right down and lands on the ground. And out comes the man from Mars. And you try to run, but he's got a gun. And he shoots you dead, and he eats your head. And then your in the man from Mars. You go out at night, eating cars. You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too, Mercury and Suburu. And you don't stop.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[Daniel Phillips]

Flash is as bad as any other standard

First, Flash is not a standard, and second, even if it was it would be one of the worst. Not the least of the problems is no cut and paste. Have you had to endure the frustration of a flash-based hotel site where the name of the hotel is part of the flash animation, or worse, the telephone number?

Re:So Flash is good now?

[LDoggg_]

I think you mean shockwave.
There is some flash in educational sites, but way to much shockwave being used.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[Richard_at_work]

First, Flash is a standard, just because its not ratified by an independant body doesnt mean it isnt a standard. Secondly, yes you may have a point on the cut and past, and that part is covered by the second part of my post. I stand by my statement that its no worse than any other standard out there.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[jallred]

No, he means Flash. I'm a multimedia eLearning developer. We used to do everything in director (shockwave) but moved to flash a few years ago. Flash files tend to be smaller, actionscript has really matured over the last few releases, and our animators greatly prefer vector over bitmap grahics.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[LDoggg_]

That's good to hear.
I've set up a 60 terminal ltsp network for a school, and the only complaints I get are shockwave apps not working.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[Daniel Phillips]

Flash is a standard, just because its not ratified by an independant body doesnt mean it isnt a standard.

Excuse me, but that is exactly what it means. Have fun inventing your own version of the English language.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[bergwitz]

No _useful_ sites use Flash. There's alot of funny ones that do though. Flash movies and games are quite common, even more so with Shockwave. Of course they could have done much the same thing with other kinds of software, but flash and shockwave is easy to use.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[hendridm]

Using Flash-enabled sites is like getting your prostate checked. Unpleasant, but often necessary.

Thank goodness for Flashblock.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[samjam]

I think that we can all work out that you are assigning different meanings to your words, and I think we all understand what you both mean.

I'm with the other guy, a standard does not need to be ratifified by a body independant of its authors to be a standard but it doesn't bother me that you disagree.

if you think the appellation "standard" does not apply, so be it, but the "non-standard"is still published and available.

Sam

Re:So Flash is good now?

[Richard_at_work]

No, that isnt what it means, but you have fun denying basic english. Lets have a look at a number of dictionary entries for 'standard' shall we?

From Dictionary.com:

Something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence.

Now we may both agree that Flash has its shortcomings, but for what it does there is simply no equal, so it excels at its use.

From Googles define:

# a basis for comparison; a reference point against which other things can be evaluated; "they set the measure for all subsequent work"
# criterion: the ideal in terms of which something can be judged; "they live by the standards of their community"
# conforming to or constituting a standard of measurement or value; or of the usual or regularized or accepted kind; "windows of standard width"; "standard sizes"; "the standard fixtures"; "standard brands"; "standard operating procedure"
# a board measure = 1980 board feet
# the value behind the money in a monetary system
# established or widely recognized as a model of authority or excellence; "a standard reference work"

Being a standard does not mean it has to be published by a recognised standards authority - you can set a standard yourself purely by creating a set of rules for it to conform to.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[matt me]

are those the words of a certain grandmaster?

i've only heard wheels of steel :(

Re:So Flash is good now?

[wild_berry]

I second this: Microsoft's Windows and Office software products are accepted standards of home use software on the x86 platform. Try finding an independent body to ratify that.

Re:So Flash is good now?

[christopher240240]

Actually, It's Blondie's "Rapture".

Re:So Flash is good now?

[SimHacker]

That's exactly what you're doing: inventing your own meanings for English words. It's hillarious that you're so wrapped up in your own twisted meanings, that you would claim that the "standard" meanings of words aren't part of the English language. Can you show me a dictionary definition that says "standard" means "ratified by an independant body"?

Flash is certainly a standard, according to many definitions in the dictionary:

A conspicuous object (as a banner) formerly carried at the top of a pole and used to mark a rallying point especially in battle or to serve as an emblem.

Something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example.

A structure built for or serving as a base or support.

In technical use, a standard is a concrete example of an item or a specification against which all others may be measured.

Open standards are publicly available specifications for achieving a specific task.

Though the Flash SWF format is an ostensibly "open" format (i.e. it is published), Macromedia retains control of it. Since Flash files do not depend on a truly open standard such as SVG, this reduces the incentive for non-commercial software to support the format (although there are several third party tools which utilize and generate the SWF file format).

-Don

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Enigma_Man]

Worst... Logo... Ever.

-Jeff Albertson

Free flash?

[whiteranger99x]

All I can say is as long as I can smack the monkey for a free iPod or PSP, I'm give it a try! :D

Re:Free flash?

[un1xl0ser]

You need Flash to smack the monkey?

WOW, I thought I had a computer fetish.

Re:Free flash?

[whiteranger99x]

LOL, that was a cheap shot, you bastard! :P

Re:Free flash?

[wootest]

http://spamusement.com/banners/banner6.gif

Re:Free flash?

[ArsonSmith]

I got flashed in the park. Last thing I wanted to do after that was smack the monkey.

Re:Free flash?

[Alsee]

In other words he successfully smacked your monkey?

-

Qualifications

[Anonymous Coward]

The alpha release isn't far away, but the development team could use some programming help, if you're available."

I haven't coded shit in 4 years (I wasted my time and money to get an MBA in the last couple of years after being out of work for over a year. Don't get an MBA!! It's FUCKING worthless!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I was a C++ coder back then. What I'm saying is, appearantly I'm not qualified to get a tech job now - or any other job.
Do you think they'd take me?!?

Re:Qualifications

[AuMatar]

Your code quality is your qualifications. Write code. Submit it. If its good enough, they'll take it.

Re:Qualifications

[AmberBlackCat]

You can probably get hired as a logo designer.

Re:Why?

[FidelCatsro]

Ever tried to get flash to work on linux PPC or linux arm etc

Problem.

[Sheepdot]

The alpha release isn't far away, but the development team could use some programming help, if you're available.

I would think that they are having problems getting programming support mainly because there are not enough people that see the flash engine as such a travesty to be closed source when it is given out for free, anyway. Same goes for Java.

The only problem with replacing free beer with free speech is that if you have the beer, you're more likely to slur the speech or forget about it altogether.

There is not enough incentive for this project to flourish.

Re:Problem.

[MoonFog]

To further your point, wouldn't it be better to endorse the use of SVG instead?

Re:Problem.

[fireboy1919]

Yeah...SVG is for rendering graphics. Not media.

The stuff doesn't move.

Re:Problem.

[LiquidCoooled]

It does if you shake your screen enough.

Re:Problem.

[MenTaLguY]

The SVG specification does include animation actually, and at least Opera and the Adobe SVG plugin do implement it.

Just isn't much out there in the way of authoring tools that support SVG animation yet.

Re:Problem.

[bersl2]

It can with the appropriate scripting.

The only problem would be whether Javascript is up to the task of making it a full Flash equivalent.

And if it is, then someone would also have to start making an appropriate GUI tool to help generate content.

Re:Problem.

[bfree]

I think the fact is that Open Source developers are more likely to work on flash blocking then a re-implementation of flash, not because of some piece of non-cost software but because flash is rarely used in any way productively.

Re:Problem.

[evilviper]

The only problem with replacing free beer with free speech is that if you have the beer, you're more likely to slur the speech or forget about it altogether.

When the beer has a few worms in it, that's plenty of motivation to go elsewhere...

Flash has all sorts of things people hate. Forced animations you can't stop, web security holes (cross-site scripting, objects, embedded java script, etc), old-fashioned buffer overflows and other exploits, privacy concerns, etc.

Java isn't nearly as bad... It's biggest problem is the restrictive license which gets in a lot of people's way. But, Java has much, much more real utility, as opposed to Flash which is almost purely eye-candy.

Re:Problem.

[fireboy1919]

So does postscript. You think that's a good idea?

I don't think it's going to happen. There are far too many renderers that treat SVG like postscript without any embedding or text.

Making them more is a big hack.

Cool

[ortcutt]

Linux on PPC users don't expect a flash player from Macromedia anytime soon, so continued GPLflash development is good for us.

Re:Cool

[FidelCatsro]

It would be nice to have the option incase i ever do find myself needing Flash installed , though most of the stuff flash is used for is rather annoying i do on occasion enjoy a few web cartoons.
Which has ment i would need to boot an x86 machine or boot into OS X , not too much of a problem really but its always nice to have options .
Added to that the fact of having a GPL version , as OSS is always my first choice.

Re:Cool

[ne0n]

I thought that was the main benefit?
OTOH as long as FlashBlock still works I don't give a crap.

Re:Cool

[alecks]

All 3 of you?

Re:Cool

[EvilIdler]

AMD64 is also largely ignored. Running a 32-bit x86 browser doesn't
work for everyone :/

Re:Cool

[mad.frog]

This will sound like a troll, but is an honest question: how many Linux-on-PPC users are there, really?

The point, of course, is that there are lots of niche areas that aren't worth Macromedia's time.

Re:Cool

[Phred T. Magnificent]

The same is true of several other platforms, even on x86. FreeBSD, for instance, doesn't have a native flash player from Macromedia, and I don't expect one in the foreseeable future. (Admittedly FreeBSD on x86 has the advantage of being able to run the Linux player in compatibility mode, which PPC Linux can't, but a native player would be an improvement.)

Re:Cool

[Daniel Phillips]

The point, of course, is that there are lots of niche areas that aren't worth Macromedia's time.

The problem is not with Macromedia, the problem is relying on closed source software for basic infrastructure.

Re:Cool

[vaeder]

Ok, I will tell the other one...
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/03/09/1314250.s html?tid=181&tid=106

Re:Cool

[sik0fewl]

Linux on PPC users don't expect a flash player from Macromedia anytime soon, so continued GPLflash development is good for us.

Good for you? You do know what Flash is, don't you?

Re:Cool

[ortcutt]

I bet he just stays in terminal all day anyway.

Re:Cool

[thephotoman]

Perhaps he just wants to check out the latest Strong Bad Email.

Re:Cool

[thm76]

I got the impression that a lot of Linux hackers use hardware from Apple. Linus, for instance.

This "niche area" really might not be worth Macromedia's time, so a free Flash player is a good thing, IMO. If I have a choice I usually visit the HTML version of web sites, but some are only available in Flash.

OTOH, I wonder why Macromedia cannot just recompile the player for Linux on PPC. After all they've got a player for Mac OS already. Can't be too hard, can it?

Re:Cool

[nogginthenog]

...and all those Amiga users ;-)

Re:Cool

[EvilIdler]

Well, personally I'd prefer a plugin for AMD64 (and I've asked
the makers about one, without any response).
With 64-bit processors becoming the new standard (slowly), I'd say
it's not a niche.

Re:Cool

[bzzzt]

Well, since 64-bits compiled code can run up to 10% faster on AMD64 it makes sense to run your apps in 64-bits mode.

Re:Cool

[Bob Uhl]

And thus the need for free software--while it may not be worth Macromedia's time to recompile for PPC, or ARM, or whatever, it's certainly worth the time of a user of one of those platforms to recompile therefor.

Re:Cool

[Bert64]

Because in order to have compatibility with 64bit and 32bit apps you need 2 sets of libraries, and to run a browser this includes all the X11 libs, image loading libs, and ofcourse glibc etc.. Severe waste of diskspace especially when the flash plugin is the only thing you'd use it for..
The alternative would be to run everything 32bit, which is also a waste since you could just use a 32bit machine instead..
On AMD64 just recompiling an app as 64bit can often give substantial speed increases, not just from the fact it's now 64bit but mainly due to the increased numbers of registers available to you, so even apps that don't benefit from being 64bit on other architectures show improvements here.

Re:Why?

[pens]

Because Macromedia hasn't released a 64-bit version of the flash player

Another Example of Linux 'Innovation'

[Anonymous Coward]

reverse engineer and copy.

Go Team Linux!

Re:Another Example of Linux 'Innovation'

[FLAGGR]

Uh no one claimed to be innovating...

So let me get this straigt: instead they should create a new format that no one will use because theyre used to using flash right? For the sake of innovation? Look at the web, its full of flash. Making a open source flash player is pretty damn shameful isn't it.

Re:Another Example of Linux 'Innovation'

[imarsman]

As I recall, Macromedia didn't seem at all motivated to produce a decent Flash viewer for Linux until the current one in its earlier version came along. Innovation, motivation, both are useful.

Re:Another Example of Linux 'Innovation'

[mabinogi]

where does Linux come in to it?

Re:Why?

[MS-06FZ]

Or even hoped the sound would synchronize properly on Intel/Linux...

Because....

[Chyeld]

Because it is only free as in iPods. Not free as in speech.

Because what's avaliable isn't really that great.

Because they think they can do better.

Re:Why?

[0racle]

Please re-enroll yourself in the FSF GPL Religion retraining center as the first phase obviously didn't take.

Re:Why?

[FhnuZoag]

Libre vs beer. Ease of porting to unsupported browsers. Insurance against Macromedia going crazy and making the next version a license encumbered, 'feature rich', bug ridden mess. The same old reasons.

The ambiguously proprietary duo

[SendBot]

GPLFlash is half of the proprietary duo that the Free Software Foundation is rallying to replace with free equivalents.

Macromedia's free as in beer flash plugin is the correct "half of the duo". The other half are the proprietary java implementations.

Re:Why?

[gclef]

I think "perfectly working" is a bit of a stretch. It loads, doesn't crash, and displays video and audio...fair enough. If you want them to sync up, though, you're out of luck.

Macromedia isn't showing much interest in making their Linux client much better (why should they?), so this effort is a perfectly reasonable one, I think.

Causality paradox?

[product byproduct]

The GPLFlash project appears on Slashdot because it is back in active development. The GPLFlash project is back in active development because it appears on Slashdot.

Re:Causality paradox?

[mph]

The GPLFlash project appears on Slashdot because it is back in active development. The GPLFlash project is back in active development because it appears on Slashdot.

That's what happens when you tamper with the Mysterious Future.

Question

[Anita Coney]

Will I still be able to disable it with PrefBar?!

The biggest advantange...

[wolf31o2]

...that I see to this is the ability to run flash applications on non-x86 machines. Then again, I've grown accustomed to not seeing little punching monkeys and other such nonsense when surfing the web, so perhaps this isn't such a good thing, after all... ;]

Anyway, good job guys. I'm glad to hear that you're back in business.

Re:The biggest advantange...

[Teancom]

Even on machines that are technically x86 (the AMD64 that I'm resting my legs on right now, for example) don't necessarily work with Macromedia's plugin. And besides just the monkey punching, there are still - even in the year 2005 - websites that I *have* to go to that *require* flash. So I end up starting a browser on a collegues machine and displaying it back. Just thought I would take the time to point that out to all the idiots that think X shouldn't be remote-transparent...

David

Re:The biggest advantange...

[dJCL]

That would be my hope from a project such as this. I have an AMD64 based laptop, and linux on that, but flash is not an option for firefox.

I used to just connect to my main system, but it is being replaced with a dual AMD64 system soon too, so I need a working library once in a while.

Most of the time a barely notice, I don't even install flash for firefox on windows because the random sites that need it I can usually just pop open IE for a moment to take a look, get past the flash and copy the URL back to firefox.

JC

What a waste of decent skill

[GlassUser]

How about we just finish ditching this flash crap? There are plenty of projects out there that aren't based on nonstandard proprietary specifications, breaking function models, and inane annoyances. Give the effort to something that's worth it.

Re:Open source SWF decompiler ?

[whiteranger99x]

What about an Open Source decompiler for SWF files ?

Oooooh, imagine the Homestar Runner episodes I could recreate :D

GPL Flash...

[Eberlin]

Once you get past the "Flash is EVIL" posts out there, and have browsed through the ming stuff for PHP -- are we anywhere near a GPLed Flash content creator?

I understand it'll eventually piss off the original creators and may break any sort of idea that Macrobe or Adobedia had about porting their stuff to Linux. Talk about vendor lock-in though.

Whether you like it or not, Flash has its uses. Would be nice to have an easy way to create the content without having to fork up that much cash to Adobe/Macromedia. Oh yeah...and all that stuff about software freedom and open formats, too.

Re:GPL Flash...

[p0ppe]

I've been playing around with SWFtools the last couple of days. It's fairly basic and undocumented, but seems to be able to do a few things.

Re:GPL Flash...

[darkgumby]

http://openlaszlo.org/

Re:GPL Flash...

[dave420]

If you want to make something in flash for free, just download the trial. 30 days of full operation. That's plenty long enough for most flash animations :) and you can re-install for another 30 days.

Or, as you say, use ming. It's more than good enough for most flash work.

Re:GPL Flash...

[MidnightBrewer]

Would be nice to have an easy way to create the content without having to fork up that much cash to Adobe/Macromedia. Oh yeah...and all that stuff about software freedom and open formats, too.

Nothing personal against the parent, but this is flawed thinking. "It would be nice to have an easy way to create money-making content without paying for it." If you're using Flash to make web content, then you should be charging for your services. If you're a hobbyist and think it's not worth paying for, find a cheaper hobby that you are willing to spend money on. If you're charging a reasonable fee, then the price of the software truly becomes negligible.

So you're paying programmers for all of their hard work in developing the software and putting up with end users' grief. Why is this such a problem for people to comprehend?

Re:OK, but...

[wed128]

Yes. This is a replacement viewer for flash. no effect on the file formats.

Re:Gentlemen

[FLAGGR]

Java isn't faster than C... maybe faster development time... What language do you think the Java VM's are coded in?

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Enigma_Man]

am I kidding? Have you seen it? It's awful, straight out of 1991, it would fit just perfect next to a couple of animated gifs of "under construction" and "send me e-mail" that folds up into an envelope and flies away. I mean, I don't usually criticize people contributing free stuff, but damn. I could've peed something in the snow better than that.

-Jesse

Re:Link to its homepage!

[nacturation]

You may use an unofficial logo I created, download it here.

Good god... my eyes!!! Must... claw out... mental image...

The Dark Room.

[Grendel Drago]

Ah, The Dark Room. Possibly the greatest use of Flash, ever.

I don't know why there's an IE version and an other version, but there you have it.

--grendel drago

GPL Acrobat Plugin????

[IHaveVoot]

That's fine and dandy having a GPL flash plugin, but does anyone know off hand of a GPL acrobat plugin? The POS one from Adobe likes to crash my firefox so much so that I prefer right-click-saving pdfs and opening then up with gpdf.

Re:GPL Acrobat Plugin????

[mopslik]

Why don't you just change the file association to automagically open in gpdf in the first place? It should be somewhere under Preferences.

As I'm a KDE user, I open all of my PDFs in kpdf by default...

Re:GPL Acrobat Plugin????

[MrCopilot]

No prob man. Like the other guys say you can turn off the plug-in-ness of acrobat & make it load outside of FF, but, This little freeware PDF Speed up doohicky http://www.acropdf.com/ really cleared up all my crashes.

I first made FF load acrobat reader external. I found this and it unloads all unnecessary plugins to acrobat and wham its up like lightning. After a few days I was curious, Reset reader as plug-in. Few months and 2 or 3 thousand Data-Sheets Later: No crashes.

Re:GPL Acrobat Plugin????

[dave420]

ghostscript, dude :)

Re:Gentlemen

[rainman_bc]

Java uses a virtual machine that runs at the speed of my old Pentium 2.

Blah blah that's grown very tiresome. Newer AWT and Swing applications run quite nicely thinks. I use Zend PHP studio and it feels as good as a good as any win32 or gtk app. The theme engine might not translate over from Gnome to Java, but that's not the end of the world.

Another thing, Java and Flash are interpreted languages

AFAIK you've been able to compile Java for a long time now IIRC. Isn't that what gcc-java is for?

You had me until that point. Comparing Java to Flash is like comparing c to animated gif. Different tools for different problems.

Re:Why?

[Brazilian Joe]

Because it can be ported to as many platforms as we want to without waiting for the benevolence of the whizbang-antialiased-vector-animation-website-intr o-blinking-ads-with-sound overlords, several rendering backends will eventually be possible (OpenGL accelerated, albeit fullscreen flash animations are not an issue anymore with current cpus, but offloading processing to GPU is IMO a Good Thing®), there are actually a few good things made in flash, like Strong Bad , it will be a while until svg gets traction on the internet, and there are already SVG implementations going along which will not die (KDE, Mozilla, Gnome).

What I want...

[bad_outlook]

Like Debon, Groth needed a Flash player that did not -- and still does not -- exist. This time it was for a version of GNU/Linux that runs on his PowerPC-based Apple iBook.

This is exactly what I'm waiting for, it will make the ibook play just like it's x86 brothers. Current version of GPLFlash doesn't work well, unless you like your browser crashing allot.

I've joined the mailing list, and will help to test out code in prep for the alpha.

First I get e17 (or 16.9999999) installed on the iBook, and now this! Things are looking good.

bo

Mod Great Grandparent up

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

it's called sarcasm. The post was funny, not -1 flamebait. If I had the points I'd be making the move...

As long as it supports Right Click - QUIT

[MrByte420]

I'll support it!

Re:As long as it supports Right Click - QUIT

[ArsonSmith]

I'd prefer Right Click - Start.

Why start off with punching monkeys???

Re:As long as it supports Right Click - QUIT

[LiquidCoooled]

Why not just Left click to start :)

I should be able to tell my flash engine how to handle itself, and not be forced to use the flashdisable addin extra.

I actually like the idea of seeing the first static frame of a flash anim without it moving, it would make sites look better and still not bug me.

Re:As long as it supports Right Click - QUIT

[MrByte420]

How many stupid ass flash ad's do you have to put up with that you can't kill except with a custom module for firefox? I yearn for Quit! :)

Re:As long as it supports Right Click - QUIT

[ArsonSmith]

That's why I think they should all start in a frozen state and then you could right click it and select start if you really wanted to see it.

Re:As long as it supports Right Click - QUIT

[pipingguy]

Hitting the escape key should stop all animation on the screen.

Re:As long as it supports Right Click - QUIT

[Threni]

As long as I can still use the excellent Firefox extension `prefbar` to disable it just like regular Flash then I'm all in favour of it!

What's next? GPL spyware?

Why must everything be a plugin???

[benjamindees]

Seriously? Firefox will happily fire up whatever pdf viewer you want as an external program. Running it as a plugin just makes the browser bloated, harder to maintain, and probably less secure.

I guess if you're into that sort of thing, though, you should try the pdf kpart functionality in Konqueror.

AMD64

[Sublimed]

As an AMD64 users i crave a GPL Flash. Currently i am using gentoo and there is no 64 bit flash available that seems stable.

I think this is great.

Re:AMD64

[Seriman]

I have 32 bit firefox binaries on my gentoo box for this reason.

Re:AMD64

[Paralizer]

This is great news for everyone, especially 64-bit users. Like you, I use Gentoo with an AMD64, and use the 64-bit firefox browser build. We've been trying to get Macromedia to port it to 64-bit through various email requests but we haven't received any replies.

Hopefully we'll be seeing great new things from GPLFlash soon.

When you hit 40...

[MisanthropicProgram]

you start speaking your mind more.

I'm beginning to think that I need to stop coming here.
I wish you yougsters would stand up for yourselves more. I know that you don't agree with everything here, but you're afraid of being modded "Flaimbait" or "Troll". I don'y give a shit. I can start a new account, pander to /. groupthink, and get modderation and Metamodderation rights withing a week. Stick up for yourselves! Trustme! I'm an oldguy who wishes he wasnt sucj a pussy!!!

Spelling errors intentional!! The best authors couldn't spell!!!Take that Grammar Nazis!!!

Re:When you hit 40...

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

Your argument is invalid for the follow reasons:

(just kidding. I agree with you ;) )

Re:Why?

[Lisandro]

Or use a proper audio backend. I mean, even RealPlayer is smart enough to figure out what you're using and adapt to it. Flash, on the other hand, keeps trying to use ESD; on my system (ALSA with the dMix plugin), the Flash plugin will refuse to play sound if anything else is playing at the time - every other program manages to do it just fine.

And yes, it doesn't seem able to play a clip over 30 seconds long without losing audio/video sync.

what about swfdec?

[dominator]

I wonder what their motivations are for working on this instead of helping out the gstreamer guys on swfdec. swfdec is licensed under the GPL and largely already works, including its Mozilla plugin. Even on non-x86 platforms.

http://www.schleef.org/swfdec/

Re:what about swfdec?

[evilviper]

swfdec is licensed under the GPL and largely already works,

I've used them both, and they're about equally limited. swfdec impliments a newer spec of SWF, but doesn't have input support at all, and generally flash-play just works with more files.

So, the question is, why SHOULD they have gone with swfdec, rather than flash-player?

Re:what about swfdec?

[Ur@eus]

The reason was that flash-player was GPL, swfdec is LGPL.

Thank you!

[MisanthropicProgram]

'nuff said.
Maybe, I was too harsh. But I really appreciate your insightfulness.

Better to try shockwave first...

[m50d]

since there isn't any kind of linux player for that.

Re:Better to try shockwave first...

[RPoet]

The goal isn't to produce a complete software suite. The goal is to produce a complete suite of free software. And with that in mind, you're right that we don't have shockwave, but we don't (in effect) have flash either, which is much more urgent.

prefer SVG

[cahiha]

I still think Flash is a bad idea. FOSS developers should concentrate on making SVG happen.

In fact, the big thing about Flash isn't the format, it's the authoring tools. A Macromedia-like authoring tool for SVG would be a much better investment of time than creating a Flash player.

Re:prefer SVG

[DimGeo]

Wish I had mod points for you. So far the only working SVG decoder I've seen is apache's one for Java.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Excelsior]

Insightfull My ass , that is just trolling.

-1 Trolling while talking about Trolling.

Would you care to mention why it is the worst logo ever.

-1 Dead f'ing obvious

I assure you i have seen worse in my time.

-1 Criticizing for ambiguity, then being totally f'ing ambiguous.

So either help him make it better by pointing out what he did wrong or shut up.

Make that better? +7 Funny

Cairo

[labratuk]

I wonder if they'll make use of cairo this time.

Re:Why?

[evanbd]

Don't forget about insurance against Digital Restrictions Management "support."

For shame.

[Rei]

Don't be so hard on the person who created the logo, after he selflessly spent three precious minutes of his life working on it.

I agree with you.

[MisanthropicProgram]

Thank you for just acknowleging my post.
I'm really sad right now. /. used to be a place where we geeks could really hammer stuff out - even if other folks found it offensive or not to their liking.

Re:Why?

[ZenCow]

another good flash animation that I haven't seen mentioned, yet... Ninjai: The Little Linja

flash isn't any more evil than guns or double fudge brownie ice cream. perhaps just as evil, tho... but still the right tool for some things.

They could...

[haeger]

...have used this logo which imho would have been MUCH worse.

.haeger

Re:They could...

[Directrix1]

Man those are absolutely hilarious.

Why Flash is good.

[MAdMaxOr]

We all know that Flash can be annoying. But...

Is there another solution for multimedia web application deployment with the reach (97% web broswer coverage) or power of Flash?

DHTML
- suffers from memory leaks
- Cross-browser issues
- Minimal typography options
- No Visual IDE

Java applets
- slow
- memory consuming
- Microsoft vs. Sun, imbroglia

A couple more points:
- There already are free Flash compilers out there (sans IDE).
- Flash can be used as a frontend to Java using an open-source project called Lazlo.

GPLFlash makes these products more useful.

Re:Why Flash is good.

[MAdMaxOr]

Referenced here: http://javascript.weblogsinc.com/entry/12340002670 34921/

Re:Gentlemen

[Ithika]

But what VM does the Java VM run on then?!?!??? (And don't tell me it's turtles all the way down!)

Mod Parent Up.

[mad.frog]

Sadly, I used all my mod points earlier today, but parent is right on the money.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Captain Splendid]

I could've peed something in the snow better than that.

ROFL!

Now that's a button I'd like to see!

Classpath for Flash?

[MAdMaxOr]

As the FSF article states, we need free Java, free Java standard classes, and free Flash.

Conspicuously missing is free standard classes for Flash. Flash ships with useful, though buggy as hell, classes and controls that should have free versions as well.

What about authoring?

[nobodyman]

To be honest, I wound up being dissapointed because I thought that GPLFlash might be an open-source Flash authoring tool.

As far as I can tell, no such tool exists (please correct me if I'm wrong). All I found was MTASC, which is just an actionscript compiler (no gui).

So, both in terms of impact (who is affected, who would use) and interest (pool of people who'd volunteer), it seems to me that an open source replacement to Flash MX ($200 upgrade / $700 full price, OSX and WinXP only, sure to go up in price thansks to the adobe buyout) is a much better time investment to the player (Free-as-in-beer, which runs on Mac, PC, Sun, Irix, and several Linux distros).

Nevermind the terminal game of catch-up that will be played: GPLFlash will *always* be behind the curve to Macromedia. Obviously the same is true for the authoring tools, but your Flash 5 content will still run on your latest-greatest Flash Player -- the reverse is not true.

Is it the fear of being sued? Is it much harder to create an author tool than a player (consider implementing all of the video/audio/video codecs that you'll need to implement on the player side vs. a GUI that outputs .swf on the authoring tool)?

Why replace the free, widely available player and not the expensive-as-hell, mac or pc only authoring tool? I don't get it.

Re:What about authoring?

[nan0]

EXACTLY. let me start out by stating that i have massive respect for OSS & free software, i used it daily, and do my best to contribute and encourage others to do the same. Now, having said so, i wonder if FSF's initiative - and this project - is not misguided? flash is a free download. it's not open source, but it is free. i am a heavy flash user, and feel that any community work would be better spent on an *authoring tool* (phpswf is limited, SEPY has no compiler, and python is too obscure for most to use) for flash. Also, for those that haven't noticed: Flash has grown tremendously since the start of GPLFlash. Once a post-script like tool for vector graphics, it's now a full blown application environment and language. remoting / Soap / wsdl, actionscript 2.0, video, webcam, and audio support does the community really think they'll be able to mimic all this functionality as well or better than macromedia themselves ? if it is not 90+% compatible, then GPLFlash will do nothing but further the public mindset that OSS is just NOT ready for public consumption, which is the exact opposite of what the FSF intended when listing it. So, i ask - WHY spend so much effort recreating what is already FREE. macromedia did a fine job in porting the last few versions of flash to linux - i miss gflashplayer, but was able to achieve same effect embedding swf within mozilla and wiring to shell with xul. not to be horrible, again, i respect all efforts and energies.... i guess i'm just begging & pleading the energy to be spend on a free author/compiler versus a player, which is indeed already free and works quite well. and also trying to talk them out of what i see to be a dead end. as a flash developer who uses it daily as a lovely UI alternative to html and even tcl/tk - if GPLFlash is not able to be less buggy than macromedia's own player, i will never use it, no matter how much i would love to show support by doing so, it just won't make sense.

Re:What about authoring?

[mjbkinx]

I have just commented on this here, but this thread seems to be more appropriate, so here goes:

Good, you found MTASC already. It was a huge boost to the OS Flash community, and there now is a wiki where you will find everything you need.
No, there is no GUI, if that's what you're looking for. You will have to use XML to describe your SWF. But there is an Eclipse plugin, and MTASC integrates nicely with it. Currently, what would be needed is a good SVG to SWF converter for the graphics, but I'm sure this could be done. You can already create an SWF with TTF fonts, PNGs, JPEGs and existing SWFs in it if you're not scared of XML. In theory, you could even draw vector graphics in XML and have them converted, but this would be at a very low level. If you're now thinking that SVG is vectors in XML, so an XSLT transform could take care of that, you're mostly right if it wasn't for the CSS in SVG.

As far as the GUI you're asking for is concerned, that's still a very far way to go of course, but if you want code-centric SWF development you can get a great environment already -- actually, if that is your approach to making SWFs I'd say you're better off with Open Source tools now than you would be with the more designer centric original Flash IDE.

Bwa ha ha! Another chance to kill Flash-based ads

[Dogtanian]

This is brilliant news!

Now instead of disabling the Macromedia Flash plug-in because I'm sick to the back teeth of crappy Flash ads, I can disable the free alternative instead.

Yay! (^_^)

Re:Gentlemen

[George Beech]

Java is horrible. Java uses a virtual machne that runs at the speed of my old Pentium 2

Just because it used to be bad doesn't mean that it hasn't gotten better recently. Any of the big java apps I've used recently run just fine. That includes ConsoleOne, Eclipse, JBuilder to name a few off the top of my head.

Another thing, Java and Flash are interpreted languages. C, on the other hand is compiled.

If you want to sound like you know what your talking about you might want to look up the definition of interpreted and compiled languages.

Compiled programs are infinitely faster than interpreted programs.

Yes they are faster, but infintely is just too much of a blanket statement. Not that it matters a whole lot, you use the right tool right job.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[emurphy42]

Unlike the other folks who are too busy gagging on their own small intestines atm, I have some specific recommendations to offer:

• More contrast between text color and background color
• Put "GPL" in a different font and/or color than "Flash", and/or tilt it 30 degrees to the left
• Offer a few more sizes

Re:Link to its homepage!

[falzer]

> I could've peed something in the snow better than that.

Come on, now you have to. It can be the official logo.

Re:Open source SWF decompiler ?

[YLee]

What about SWFTools?

Re:Link to its homepage!

[wfberg]

Let's see,
- the colors do not contrast
- the colors aren't strong colors, like primary or tertiary colors, not do they evoke warmth (purples, reds) or a feeling of modernity (greys, blues, metal), rather they remind us of biological substances we'd rather avoid (urine, vomit)
- colors that don't translate well to black/white, spot color or halftone
- busy background
- illegible font (also, not hinted, the letters aren't just anti-aliassed, it's as if they've been painted with water based paint on blotter paper. smudgy.)
- unnecessary change of color for the lines
- the lines themselves add nothing to the logo (especially with the busy background)
- as an aside; the logo is actually more legible if you run it through a color-blindness simulator, which suggests the designer might be colorblind
- tiny
- not a scalable vector (it's a logo for a flash clone!!! well, like, duh!)
- the name gplflash itself isn't ideal; only geeks have any notion of what the GPL is, other people won't remember the name. FreeFlash would be better, though a tonguetwister (say it out loud 10 times).
- no personality. It's just a wacky font, 2 lines and a busy background. I bet the font wasn't designed by the logo 'designer' either.

Take a look at some BigAssCompany's websites.. IBM, Microsoft, BMW, McDonalds, Motorola, Exxon, etc. etc. Notice how their logos are legible? Don't have icky colors? Don't have busy backgrounds? Are vector-scaleable? Also work in monochrome?

Ok, Oracle uses a wacky font, I'll give you that. But at least they use a primary color. It burns away your eyes, but at least it stands out.

Now, there might be worse logos. I can think of one just like that.. "Goatse Retirement Homes".

But it's still a pretty darn bad logo. If you'd
hand it in a class, you should get 0%.

800k user

[mnemonic_]

makes sense. Though you're a 760k.

Hooray!

[Greyfox]

More libraries for me to not install on my computer. I haven't even installed the flash libraries. I don't like animation on my web pages. I've disabled animated GIFs and Javascript in about:config and it makes the web a WHOLE lot less obnoxous to browse around. Sure every once in a while I run across a flash-only website, and I just don't browse those.

Of course, if you must have it, there's a happy little firefox plugin that only plays the flash when you click on the image.

Wrong priorities !!

[Qwavel]

Given (very) limited resources and tons of things to do, shouldn't the community focus on open source replacements for software/protocols which are not supported on a free platforms?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Adobe/Macromedia support flash for FLOSS browsers (eg. firefox) and FLOSS OS's (ie. Linux). The company is not aligned with MS or Apple, and appears to be committed to providing cross-platform support in the future.

It would be better if they provided source, but surely cross-platform is an important goal too.

I have no connection of any sort with Adobe/Macromedia or Flash.

Remember

[commodoresloat]

Remember GPLFlash, the free software project that was supposed to replace the proprietary Macromedia Flash plugin?

No.

The biggest reason Flash must be stopped dead?

[suitepotato]

Cartoon Network's ongoing travesties laughingly called cartoons. Not since Hanna Barberra has anything been designed from day one to be so easily made in Flash that eventually, some web graphics nerd from nowhere could come up with an animated web cartoon in Flash that the ordinary CN viewer would easily mistake for being something that took a crew of six hundred contractors in SE Asia and a thousand yes men and money people in Hollyweird to produce.

First time I saw Samurai Jack all I could think was, "this is Flash, right? What hard times has Mako fallen on to lend his voice to a Flash production?" Flash: it makes two-dimensional as easy as Star Trek writers do.

Needs to recognize ESC key to stop ad animations.

[thedarb]

It would be an excellent feature if this plugin recognized the ESC key to stop all flash animation. Browsers today recognize that for stopping animated gif's, and if that applied flash animations as well, suddenly flash ads wouldn't be so horrible.

It must also correctly deliver all Strong Bad email content. :)

*TheDarb

Re:Link to its homepage!

[cloudmaster]

If only one can be chosen, *increase contrast*!

Because nobody but us geeks use SVG!

[Solra Bizna]

Saying "Why support Flash, when SVG is better?" is like saying "Why support JPEG/GIF/BMP when PNG is better?"

-:sigma.SB

Re:Because nobody but us geeks use SVG!

[823723423]

Yeah, but resources are limited. And yeah, some people did abandon GIFs for PNGs. So What's your point?

What's the point?

[d_jedi]

Macromedia already releases a flash player for Windows, MacOS, Linux, PocketPC (wow..), OS/2, Solaris, HPUX, and IRIX..

Now, a free flash authoring program.. that would be newsworthy!

Re:What's the point?

[t_allardyce]

The point is that like HTML, the browser should give the user more control over the content - this player would be a great opportunity to put the power back in the users hands - in the same sort of way that you can override a websites colour scheme and font sizes.

Re:What's the point?

[d_jedi]

Hopefully what you say is true..
but I fear this will just lead RMS to make another "Java trap"-type rant.. where developers of OSS should target the free(dom) (but incomplete) version of Flash..

Re:What's the point?

[10Ghz]

Macromedia already releases a flash player for Windows, MacOS, Linux, PocketPC (wow..), OS/2, Solaris, HPUX, and IRIX..

yes they do. But there is one thing: For example, on Linux they support x86. What if you run Linux on AMD64? Or PPC? Or any other non-x86-platform? Well, you wont get Flash, since it only works on x86-platform!

Re:Link to its homepage!

[macaulay805]

I just made this unofficial logo about 10 minutes ago .. check it out and tell me what you think! linky here

Why must software be free ?

[MarkTina]

Why is there so much pressure to make free alternatives to commercial software ? If it already exists and it's halfway OK then just buy the f'ing thing, that way you support further development of the software by that company and you encourage them to become more inovative

Just seems to me that some people are so tight fisted that they'd rather do as much as they can to remove a company from the market by cloning their software and giving it away free .. what do they hope to achieve ? Are they hoping that the commercial software house will give up on that product and sack it's employees ?

I've nothing against someone producing software and releasing it for free themselves that's their choice, but it just annoys me when people rip off other peoples ideas .. it's almost seems like the warez scene with more thought involved.

How does the whole copyright thing get enforced for things like this ? What happens if you produce "WonderTool!" and sell it for $20 a go, then a bunch of people decide that $20 is far to pricey and produce "GnuWonderTool" which looks and performs identically to yours but is free ... how are you then supposed to pay towards the mortgage ?

Portability

[Anonymous Coward]

> not enough people that see the flash engine as
> such a travesty to be closed source when it is
> given out for free, anyway. Same goes for Java.

Yea. Unless you have an Athlon64, PPC, ARM, MIPS, Sparc, M68K, etc, etc. Unless you have seen a different download site than I have.

License

[Brandybuck]

It's a plugin and used the GPL license. This means anything it plugs into has to be GPL as well. Why wasn't the LGPL used instead? The GPL is good for standalone applications, like a flash player, but is less than ideal for a reusable component like a library or plugin. Depending on one's interpretation of the GPL, you might not be able to use this plugin alongside a non-GPL plugin.

Re:License

[magicianeer]

GPL sec 0: "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License"

Using the combination of a GPL plugin with non-free browsers and plugins is legal.

You can distribute the GPLflash plugin alone. The GPLflash plugin is not dependent on any particular browser or other plugin (though it does require a browser). The browser and other plugins work without the GPLflash plugin. So the browser is not a derivitive work that must be distributed with the GPLflash plugin.

Re:License

[Brandybuck]

Yes, section 0 of the GPL does say that. However, history has shown that that FSF has different definitions of copying, distribution and modification than I do. For example, they consider linking to be derivation, and thus a form of modification, even though nothing is being modified. Loading a plugin is a form of linking. The FSF places the threshold of derivation at the process level. A plugin runs in the same process space as the browser. Exceptions are made for the OS and OS components, but none are made for anything else the software runs on top of.

The very use of the GPL tells me that the plugin was meant for GPL browswers only. Otherwise the LGPL would have been used. So why wasn't it?

Re:License

[maxwell demon]

Moreover, having a GPL plugin installed also means that you cannot at the same time have a proprietary plugin installed, even if your browser's license would otherwise allow that (simple example, your browser might be BSD licensed, which is both compatible with GPLed and with proprietary plugins). For example, installing GPLFlash at the same time as a proprietary Java plugin wouldn't be allowed.

Re:Bwa ha ha! Another chance to kill Flash-based a

[Internet_Communist]

or, you could learn how to use adblock and never see an ad again.

oh yeah and you'll probably want this too:
http://www.geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/

NOT free

[Luke-Jr]

The thing is, it's NOT free. Merely free of charge, which is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much something costs if it denying your natural rights to modify and share it.

Also, tell me how you expect anyone on non-x86 platforms to view Flash right now? You can't (with the one exception of Mac OS). Hardly cross-platform.

Besides, isn't there an animated SVG format that does what Flash does better? After all, Flash is merely an animation format. Abuse of Flash (such as interactive websites) are just that-- abuse. Any website requiring Flash should be ignored and its contents considered useless.

Re:NOT free

[cpeterso]

isn't there an animated SVG format that does what Flash does better?

but what tools does an artist created SVG animations? Where can I get an SVG player plugin? Adobe's SVG Viewer plugin is huge and rarely updated. And what will Adobe do with its SVG player after it finishes its acquisition of Macromedia? Will Adobe promote Flash or SVG? They have SVG, but have dropped the ball promoting it.

Firefox will supposedly support SVG eventually, but how many Joe AOLs use Firefox?

Re:NOT free

[hritcu]

He was talking about the Flash/SVG file formats, not the tools. And from the file format point of view I would go with SVG any time rather than go with the proprietary Flash.

You can rest assured though, that SVG support in tools is catching up very quickly. This will happen even if Adobe goes all Flashy and entirely drops SVG, which I hope won't happen. Opera 8.0 and Firefox 1.1 (alpha) have both SVG support. Also the Renesis SVG 1.2 Rendering Engine will be available this autumn for Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape, Internet Explorer and Opera. I would rather worry about what will happen to Flash once Macromedia got bought by Adobe than what will happen to SVG, because SVG is a vendor independent standard.

Adobe's SVG Viewer plugin is huge and rarely updated

You call 2.27MB huge? Sure, that is more than 684KB (Flash Player) but still it is very small. And unlike the Flash Player the Adobe SVG Viewer is implementing a standard and they are doing it very well. Should I care how often they have to update it to do this?

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Lillesvin]

Then they'll have to rename the project to GPeeLFlash. :-p

Re:Link to its homepage!

[catalax]

Worst... Logo... Ever.

Now come on, only discouraging is a bad thing; it blocks people from moving forward. Working together and explaining what's wrong is a much better way.

I agree that it is not a good logo, but I will explain why:

• The button lacks reference; the only one it provides is the "GPLFlash" text. Adding a slogan or a logo would help.
• Noisy background.
• Hard readable font.

Producing a good logo needs much experience and a good artistical feeling.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Dasch]

I've just made a quickie with Inkscape. How about this:

PNG
SVG

Please keep it faithful

[t_allardyce]

All i can say is that if this project is to become mainstream (and it would be cool) please please please please please please don't screw up the implementation, it must behave _exactly_ as the real flash plug-in does (for whatever version) or we will go round in circles - one of the best reasons for using flash is consistency across platforms which is vital for graphical sites, HTML is great at getting the information across but sucks at cross platform graphics because every single browser is different and has its own bugs and unsupported CSS/HTML standards. SVG should be the standard but the user base is just too low :(

Helping Flashblock woudl be more usefull.

[guidryp]

I detest Flash. Why help build open flash?

Maybe time is better spent helping making flashblock better.

http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

Re:Helping Flashblock woudl be more usefull.

[Al Dimond]

I've seen it fail to block flash a few times. One site on which flash gets through is cbs.sportsline.com, at least on my computer. I haven't really looked hard at why, but it has flash ads and content that get right through.

Re:Helping Flashblock woudl be more usefull.

[guidryp]

The installer could also be better. You need to do a deinstall of older version (which is not that automated) and then install newer version.

Some interactions which may not be entirely the fault of flashblock cause certain pages to crash the browser (doesn't happen without it installed). Techreport does this on a regular basis but not all the time, probably dependant on the rotation of their adverts.

All in all my favorite plugin, but it is rough around the edges.

Re:I've Got It!

[Lord Kano]

I really believe that some people enjoy the feelings of superiority that they get when they have to explain "free" to the ignorant masses.

LK

Re:Gentlemen

[pitcher99]

Comparing Java to Flash is like comparing c to animated gif Not really, it's like comparing c and smalltalk.

Back in a Flash

[Doc Ruby]

It's interesting how many people complain about how "Flash" is "proprietary", even though the data format is documented, compared to how few people contribute to actually making an open source plugin that processes it. If all the collective hours of whining about "proprietary" Flash were spent programming, the open source plugin would be better than the Macromedia one by now.

Re:Gentlemen

[m50d]

It is tiresome but it's still true. You might not notice if you have a newer machine, but for me on my 800mhz duron java apps are still unusably slow. So I will keep complaining about them. I haven't tried Zend, but azureus, yaggui and jedit are all painfully slow (click menu, 2 seconds before it loads up, and don't get me started on load times for the apps themselves). I've tried various java versions, even 1.5, it's still too slow.

Gcj is great for those programs that work on it. Unfortunately, it's still not at the stage where you can take a random java prog and expect to be able to compile it with gcj.

Proprietary software has a short term life

[Spy der Mann]

By reading the article, I realized that, eventually, all prop. will be replaced with FOSS - just like Sony CD players gave way to the clones.

The proprietary value (which companies earn) is the value of the INVENTION: To fulfill specific - created or not - needs.

As the invention's usage is more and more common, the public gets acquainted enough to imitate (and even outperform) the invention. This is how inventions evolve.

Seems that with Open Source, this phenomenon extends to software, too. Who knows if tomorrow (long-term) we'll have photoshop clones (NOT the Gimp), windows clones (ReactOS, anyone?), etc.

Of course, then more niches will appear (people will need specialization), and the cycle will begin.

MING!!!!

[Corson]

Ever heard of ming? Check out www.opaque.net/ming -- it's freeware for creating Flash MX documents in Perl or PHP. I use both on my website. :)

Re:I've Got It!

[FhnuZoag]

Well, it certainly brightens up my day!

I'd like to see GPLKillFlash...

[Slashdot Junky]

I'd like to see GPLKillFlash, because I hate visiting website that require Flash. Especially those sites that are using it to accomplish what basic HTML could do. You know, I didn't much like to when browser plug-ins hit the net way back when. Never the less, having a less bloated alternative is still a good thing.

-Slashdot Junky

Re:Why?

[bersl2]

there are actually a few good things made in flash

All of these "Flash R evil!!!1!" types forget this. Flash is by far the best way to create and publish animation on the Internet. And just as with any other medium, 95% of the stuff out there is crap, so I wouldn't consider it any lesser of an art form. Hell, Homestar Runner has thoroughly left its mark on Internet culture, and I don't think it would have had the same opportunity without a medium with the same properties as Flash.

Of course, the sooner we can move this creativity to a Free medium, the better.

The FSF page is condescending

[jb.hl.com]

If I was a user, I'd be very put off by the FSF page linked in the story:

These projects are important because computer users are continually being seduced into using non-free software

"seduced" into using non-free software? Jesus wept, that makes them sound like complete loonies...not to mention, it's insulting to the intelligence of users. They really need to work on their wording and image, because if that's the way they present themselves to the public then they won't get very far.

Not to mention, I see no issue with the Flash player being closed source as it is. Someone already mentioned swfdec...

Elaborate-MonoForm

[Anonymous Coward]

"So if your uname says AMD64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, or MIPS, the smug reply from Macromedia is "sorry 'bout your bad luck! Use Windows, buy an x86 machine!""

Sun Solaris (Sparc)

SGI IRIX

HP-UX

Pocket PC (color devices supported only)

Re:Elaborate-MonoForm

[Synbiosis]

pwnd.

Mod parent up, please.

Re:Elaborate-MonoForm

[Too Much Noise]

Heh, I was actually curious enough to check those binaries. Guess what did file have to say about them?

solaris:
libflashplayer.so: ELF 32-bit MSB shared object, SPARC, version 1 (SYSV), stripped

irix:
libflashplayer.so: ELF 32-bit MSB MIPS-II shared object, MIPS, version 1 (SYSV), stripped

hp-ux ... requires registration for free trial, too lazu to search another link; it could be 64bit though, as the HP page lists Itanium; however, it also says flashplayer6, so it's old.

Pocket PC ... requires flash - doh! no can do, Macromedia has no flash for my Linux x86-64; but PocketPC is not 64bit anyway

So I gues the GP was right, getting 64bit binaries from Macromedia now is tough, unless you're using windows for Itanium. Perhaps after they make a win plugin for x86-64 things will get better ... or perhaps not.

Re:Elaborate-MonoForm

[lisaparratt]

It should be noted that outside of the 64 bit flavours of x86, there's little point in 64 bit flash.

On most processors, 32 bit programs and libraries can use 64 bit data transfers/registers. The only reason you'd go for a full 64 bit app is if you need to use over 2 to 4 GB of memory, depending on the platform. A web browser doesn't really need this, so gets a speed advantage from using 32 bit addressing and 64 bit wide data bus.

Re:Elaborate-MonoForm

[Bert64]

Moreso from the fact that when running in 64bit mode, amd64 chips aren't so register-starved as 32bit x86 are.

Re:Elaborate-MonoForm

[Bert64]

You can't really count the IRIX version, its flashplayer 4.0 and hasn't been updated since 1999!

F4L

[diegocgteleline.es]

F4L, screenshots

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Breakfast Pants]

#1 problem is not the looks. It is the trademark violation. Granted this is implicit the name of the poject itself and not just the logo. GPLFlash needs to change its name if it ever wants to be taken seriously and at the same time stay out of trouble. Otherwise as soon as it starts working well again it will be slammed with a ceast and desist--probably no lawsuit since it isn't really going to cost Macrodobe money (it isn't a Flash editor), but definitely a cease and desist because to keep a trademark you have to protect it.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[dave420]

well, if you compare their logo to that of Macromedia, which one do you think people will prefer?

It's a big problem with most open source projects - they don't have graphic designers or branding experts, just coders. Draw your own conclusions ;)

SVG?

[Trollstoi]

What is taking SVG so long?

Firefox 1.1 reads SVG natively

[KayakFun]

In the release notes of Firefox 1.1 alpha, I saw that they finally are adding the native SVG support in Firefox by default. On other/earlier browsers you can download the Adobe SVGviewer plugin.

SVG is an XML dialect, standardized by the W3C. SVG is to Flash what PNG was to GIF. Flash is history!

Re:Firefox 1.1 reads SVG natively

[gribbly]

"SVG is to Flash what PNG was to GIF. Flash is history!"

Right, just like GIF is history. Try doing a "Save Image As" on any image on slashdot.

grib.

Re:Firefox 1.1 reads SVG natively

[LiTa03]

What? They still use BMPs?

Open Content Creation Tools? Sure:

[mjbkinx]

Check out osflash.org.
The Open Source Flash community is really taking off these days. You can create SWFs without any need for commercial products.
There's an Open Source Eclipse Plugin for ActionScript2 (ECMA262 v4 based, classes, interfaces, typing...), and you can use Ant to convert an XML to SWF with an OS tool, and then have your code compiled into it with an OS compiler.

Re:Open Content Creation Tools? Sure:

[nobodyman]

You replied to my thread, thought I'd hop the fence and reply to yours.

It's encouraging to see efforts being made along this way. As I'm sure that the current iteration of tools will appeal more to coders than to artists, It will interesting to see what comes out of of the "programmer" camp. The stigma with Flash was it provided a lot of interesting opportunites in terms of the way websites interact with users, but it ended up being seen as a tool to create ever-more obnoxious Hamsterdance animations.

That said, what bothers me the most about Flash isn't necessarily how it's applied, but the cultural aspect of it. Flash is a complete break with the egalitarian history of the web and how web developers learned their stuff. Call me a commie, but one of the main reasons why the internet took off back in the mid 90's was because the spec was open, many of the tools for viewing and creating (and even hosting) content were free, and if you wanted to learn html all you had to do was go to some good sites, select "View Source", and see how other people did what you wanted to do.

With Flash, all that is broken. Macromedia piggy-backed on a ubuiqitous platform -- made so by free tools and open standards -- hooked users on visuals that rivaled anything on the web before.... and then slapped an $800 price tag on the authoring tools. Bastards.

You just wait: if the OSS crowd creates design tools that are 1/10th as good as Flash MX, I promise you'll see a massive price drop, or a free "Flash MX Lite". Just like how MySql prompted SQL Server Express from M$.

Re:Open Content Creation Tools? Sure:

[mjbkinx]

The stigma with Flash was it provided a lot of interesting opportunites in terms of the way websites interact with users, but it ended up being seen as a tool to create ever-more obnoxious Hamsterdance animations.
...as can be seen in the comments here whenever something Flash related gets posted.

That said, what bothers me the most about Flash isn't necessarily how it's applied, but the cultural aspect of it. Flash is a complete break with the egalitarian history of the web and how web developers learned their stuff. Call me a commie, but one of the main reasons why the internet took off back in the mid 90's was because the spec was open, many of the tools for viewing and creating (and even hosting) content were free, and if you wanted to learn html all you had to do was go to some good sites, select "View Source", and see how other people did what you wanted to do.
Yes, I remember these days. However, there are a plethora of tutorials freely available, and the binary format saves a lot of bandwidth.
I agree that open formats were very important for the Internet to take off, and they still are important for many applications today. However, it's a two edged sword. I'm quite sure that, had it be an open (as opposed to openly documented, as it is now) standard, there would have been some vendor or another who would have had a player integrated with its operating system that would work about like the other, but not quite.

With Flash, all that is broken. Macromedia piggy-backed on a ubuiqitous platform -- made so by free tools and open standards -- hooked users on visuals that rivaled anything on the web before.... and then slapped an $800 price tag on the authoring tools. Bastards.
So they're making money with it. Good for them. They employ many programmers, and have to pay them somehow. You can hardly blame them to have come up with a successful product.
They develop the player and give it to the consumers for free. The ones paying for the licenses are the ones who make money by developing for the infrastructure Macromedia created. Other companies came up with products which can export SWFs, too, and now there is a free, open alternative.

You just wait: if the OSS crowd creates design tools that are 1/10th as good as Flash MX, I promise you'll see a massive price drop, or a free "Flash MX Lite". Just like how MySql prompted SQL Server Express from M$.
I'd like to see such a tool, too. If Inkscrape could export SWFs, we'd be almost there.
I must say, though, that your last paragraph gave me the impression that what you really want is free, not necessarily open software.

Value software freedom in its own right.

[jbn-o]

Even if Macromedia had distributed something for users on a variety of OSes (not just GNU/Linux systems) on non-Intel-like hardware (such as Mac PPC), this would be a great development for everyone because it gives us something Macromedia isn't giving us: software freedom. The freedom to share and modify should be valued in its own right, not just because it is less expensive or can be recompiled for less popular combinations of hardware and operating system.

flash cycle in the ad world

[denidoom]

As an implementer of Flash in a business environment, it's important to be able to edit the source files. Too many times I've received a .swf from a client and it is missing something (usually click tracking which has to be embedded, or a URL, or it's too heavy and needs optimization, etc.). Having the source .fla becomes important. But a lot of "designers" are so full of themselves and their Flash masterpeice getting the .fla is nearly impossible. I guess they're afraid you're going to rip off their wicked script or something. And then you find out they are using a non-macromedia Flash-like application so they do not have .fla files but some other kind of format, which you do not have, nor will invest the time to gownload the free trial because after all you're dealing with 100 advertisers and insertion orders that must go up *today* and if the designer had complied with the specifications in the first place you wouldn't be wasting time back and forth with some snot that thinks they know everything. Then, they insist on making the needed changes themselves. 3 days are lost while they milk their client (our mutual client who they are creating the artwork for) for more money, and revenue is lost. The mutual client thinks we are being hard headed and unflexible and doesn't understand nor want to hear the whys. fun times

Re:Link to its homepage!

[wikinerd]

100% Overrated. That's a misuse of moderation powers. There is nothing wrong with my post.

I thought SVG was going to replace Flash...

[bergeron76]

I thought that the SVG format was supposed to replace Flash. I could be mistaken, but I thought SVG was Vector based, and it could be manipulated similarly to the way SWF/Flash does.

Can SVG do this?

Do we really need this?

[Matt Clare]

The player is at least free as in beer, the SWF standard is open, and apps like PHP currently use an open library to render SWF files (ImageMagic???).

Shouldn't talented coders be working on Wiki tools, web browsers, spam assassins, P2Ps and kernels.... - stuff we could all innovate with?

Once open source has conquered the world could we then come back and make sure we have a free, as in speech, flash player?

What we need

[datadriven]

... is a swf authoring program. The only reason I still use windows is for swish, which does everything flash does in about 1/10 of the time. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get it running with wine.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[visgoth]

The GPL text is difficult to read against the blue background. Perhaps using white for those letters will provide some contrast.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[LocoMan]

I like that logo, except for the GPL part. Black over dark blue lacks contrast, that part gets lost. I'd change the font color to white on those letters.

Re:Gentlemen

[rainman_bc]

even 1.5, it's still too slow.

Just to point out they're on Java 5 now. You're 3.5 major revisions behind ;)

(In case u didn't catch the joke, they kinda skipped a few #'s lol)

On my P4 1.6 Laptop running FC3 all Java apps load very well. Zend PHP Studio and Netbeans load great.

On my Athlon 1700+ all apps load great too.

My desktop btw is three years old and is an Athlon XP 1800. Your P3 800 is a bit dated IMO. Time to upgrade instead of expecting everything to continue to support your desktop.

Three words...

[bcrowell]

barbie

dot

com!

This message brought to you by my kids.

This project sucks

[sbrown123]

I usually love the OSS movement. This one smacks in the face of stupidity. Its just a bad project. Cloning proprietary software to make it "open" will only make companies (1) less likely to standardize their file formats without patents and (2) hurt companies who have invested R&D to bring us new and innovative products. GPLFlash should instead focus on building a competitive alternative to Flash. OpenOffice, for example, is not a clone of Microsoft Office. It is similair but have obvious differences. It is a competitor. Firefox is not IE. But its growing usage has forced Microsoft to start improving IE. Competition is good. Trying to replace proprietary products with open source clones is bad business.

Re:This project sucks

[Mornelithe]

How much money does Macromedia make on the Flash plugin?

Answer: None. It's free.

Macromedia makes money selling the Flash development suite, and as yet, GPLFlash is not attempting to create one (and I doubt they ever will). If anything, the effect of this project will be that more people will be able to view Flash, since Macromedia only has a player for 32-bit x86 Linux. That makes the development suite more valuable, because you can reach more people.

In addition, people are working on SVG support in open source browsers, which is something of an alternative to Flash.

So your entire argument is pretty much unfounded.

Re:This project sucks

[sbrown123]

Answer: None. It's free.

Currently, yes. They could always change that. Its *their* software so they can charge for it.

GPLFlash is not attempting to create one (and I doubt they ever will).

Does Macromedia's development suite run on something other than x86 windows? Won't that need to be cloned too for 64-bit computers running some obscure, hardly used operating system? As for making the development tools "more valuable", there are alternative development tools for creating Flash today. But they are noticeably different.

If anything, the effect of this project will be that more people will be able to view Flash, since Macromedia only has a player for 32-bit x86 Linux.

Supporting 32-bit Linux was quite a stretch for Macromedia. They built software that will be used on less than half a percent of computer desktops. Why would they do this? They like penguins? No. It's because they wanted to be *the* standard plugin for supporting Flash on all major desktop operating systems. Their reward for doing this? A bunch of OSS fanatics creating a clone that can run not only on odd operating systems but on systems they Macromedia Flash plugin currently supports. I'm sure they will just say screw it, patent the file format, and stick with Macs and Windows. Thanks GPLFlash!

So your entire argument is pretty much unfounded.

Sorry, lack your crystal ball and tarot cards for predicting the future.

Re:This project sucks

[Mornelithe]

Currently, yes. They could always change that. Its *their* software so they can charge for it.

Yeah, I'm sure it's very likely that they'll start charging everyone for the Flash plugin. God knows that people are dying to pay $25 to see advertisements and hear music on Britney Spears' website.

Flash wouldn't be anywhere near as ubiquitous if people had to pay for the plugin. How many everyday people pay for the pro version of Quicktime (not counting anything bundled with OS X)?

Does Macromedia's development suite run on something other than x86 windows?

Probably not. What difference does that make? There's a big difference in scope between cloning the player and creating a usable, full-fledged development suite. Your argument here is bordering on a "slippery slope," and I haven't seen too many of those that hold up realistically.

Besides, according to your criteria, they could just make their Flash suite work a little differently, and it'd be okie dokie, because it's not an exact clone.

No. It's because they wanted to be *the* standard plugin for supporting Flash on all major desktop operating systems. Their reward for doing this? A bunch of OSS fanatics creating a clone that can run not only on odd operating systems but on systems they Macromedia Flash plugin currently supports. I'm sure they will just say screw it, patent the file format, and stick with Macs and Windows.

Care to explain your logic here?

Oh no, Macromedia won't have the only Flash plugin anymore. That means... What exactly? What's the worst that could happen? The OSS hackers come up with something that works better (for example, doesn't take up 100% CPU when running; doesn't have laggy audio/skip every 5 seconds on Linux) than the official plugin and embarrass Macromedia? That's about the only downside I can think of, other than your "*handwave* they're going to charge for it in the future" argument.

Explain exactly how this is different from Open Office opening/saving MS file formats, other than the fact that people have to reverse engineer them, so it does a mediocre job at it. The interface is a little different? So what? If OO can do everything that MS Office can do, how is that competition, and having two different Flash plugins isn't?

What is the business model of giving away a free plugin that doesn't do any advertising, other than to sell the development suite to create content for said plugin?

Sorry, lack your crystal ball and tarot cards for predicting the future.

I'm not using a crystal ball. I'm looking at the current situation, and asking why you think writing a Free replacement for a free plugin would make a company go totally apeshit.

Ah, there's no pleasing some people.

[edxwelch]

Flash is available on Linux & Mac, and about to release a symbian version for Nokia.
I presume they will be forced to release a version for 64-bit windows anyway.
Maybe these guys could invest their time more productively making a Linux version of Flash studio. That would be useful.

Re:Ah, there's no pleasing some people.

[laffer1]

How about Linux ON mac.. Linux on sparc.. Linux on (insert anything besides x86 here). How about freebsd, netbsd, openbsd, opendarwin, OS/2 Warp/ecomstation, ...

There is a serious need for this. Granted its possible to run flash in linux emulation mode sometimes in *bsd on a ia-32 box but it sucks.

How about all the sites that require flash to browse. My university's payroll site uses flash buttons for navigation!!!!!! The division of student affairs doesn't even have flash built into our Ghost images! (DONT EVER USE FLASH FOR NAVIGATION.. if you do.. your an )

Re:Ah, there's no pleasing some people.

[edxwelch]

Well, it is possible show an alternative menu if flash isn't detected, unfortunately there are far to many people making web sites that don't care about usability.

Re:The difference

[nacturation]

If he had only just said "That sucks", I wouldn't have said anything. But he claimed to be able to do it better. So if he's going to make a claim, he should shit or get off the pot.

Obviously, he's waiting for it to snow.

Re:Couldnt care less...

[jericho4.0]

Great. You can use flash on Linux, so what does it matter. Real foresight there.

I can't use flash on OpenBSD, linux on ARM processers, linux on PowerPC, or AMD64 (natively). These platforms are now crippled by this. An open player would fix this. Get it?

Re:Link to its homepage!

[wikinerd]

I don't have any problem with the -1, my problem is with the "overrated". I just can't understand why it's overrated.

Flash as an application platform

[Dr Cool]

Flash as an application platform (ie, Macromedia's online store uses a Flash shopping cart system) is an interesting idea for rich applications, except it doesn't degrade well. SVG is a much better way to go for Flash-style applications because they degrade far better and still retain much of their look and usefulness.

Flash is a great tool for marketing, games, and web comics... but Macromedia desperately wants it to become an application authoring platform. I think the open source community would be better served with a more aggressive push into SVG which has all the same graphical capabilities of Flash. When combined with JavaScript/AJAX and CSS, it's just as powerful.

Re:Elaborate -- Help stamp out SPAM!!

[stuuf]

Firefox could be updated to filter out flash content on specific websites. A quick click, and a site that offends me can be blacklisted...

Have you tried the Adblock extension? There's also Flashblock, which puts every flash object behind a "Click to play" layer, but it doesn't work very well alongside Adblock.

Great Link!

[Dog135]

Thanks for that link!

I'm color blind and I'm always trying to explain to my wife what things look like to me. When I saw that site, and what "protanopia" color blindness looks like, I couldn't tell the difference between those pics and the originals.

But that is weird. I can usualy tell red and green apart, no problem. But light greens do look yellow to me. (and purple flowers look blue)

I downloaded the filters so I can show my wife why I'm not interested in sunsets.

Re:Great Link!

[dabuk]

I have exactly the same problem. I have never had any problem differentiating between red and green, but yellow and light greens can be troublesome.

I had this really annoying computer game as a child that had yellow objects flying around on a green background. Since I could barely see them I had to work out the exact timing to progress past that part of the game.

Oh yes, please fragment Flash

[Urusai]

Maybe people will stop using it.

==== PUNCH THE MONKEY AND WIN!!! ====

They must mean the Flash hax0r who wrote the ad.

Some more funny logos

[Neoncow]

I knew I saw that somewhere before..

http://b3ta.com/features/phalliclogoawards/

Re:Gentlemen

[Panoramix]

It is tiresome but it's still true. You might not notice if you have a newer machine, but for me on my 800mhz duron java apps are still unusably slow.

I think that sounds like a memory problem, not so much the CPU speed. Perhaps your machine does not have enough physical RAM to hold the huge virtual machine allocation and still cache all the shared libraries required by it. In that case, every startup of the virtual machine will be dreadfully slow, and swapping will only make things worse.

But Java itself is not slow, if you give it enough RAM. That's a misconception. A reasonable one, I will add, particularly if you used the early versions and then dropped it, like I did. But if you'll forgive a little rant, here's an anecdote.

A month ago or so I wrote a general C implementation of the a-star algorithm (AI stuff, commonly used to compute routes on a graph), and tested on some fairly demanding problems, both in memory and CPU cycles. I thought it was rather nice, e.g., solved most solvable combinations of the "eight-slides" puzzle in less than a second, and exhausted the search space for unsolvable combinations in 10 seconds or so.

Then, just for the hell of it, I wrote a quick Java implementation. Would you believe it was nearly 10 times faster? I couldn't, at first. But it really was.

I went back and actually profiled the C version, and found that my data structures were hideously slow. Long story short, I replaced some arrays with red-black trees, and in the end, yes, the C version ran faster than Java. But not much faster. Just some 10-20% faster. And it was much harder to get it right.

Now, this is not to be construed as an endorsement of Java. I don't like the stupid language, and Mono/.Net is much better IMO, as far as virtual machines go---at least you can choose the language. And I don't use programming tools where "Hello World" requires megabytes of memory to even start, just on general principle.

But my point is that, provided you have lots and lots of RAM, recent Java is fast. I couldn't believe exactly how fast until it hit me in the head.

I want a flash creation program

[oirtemed]

give me a tool to create the stuff in linux and id be happy

SVG and Flash

[Eccles]

Are SVG and Flash similar enough that a player capable of handling both would be possible? Seems like it might be easier and more practical to have a single engine that handles both specs.

quality ...

[moro_666]

the last gpl flash thong that i saw had a divizion by zero error in it's sound handling ...

the result was that my mozilla tended to crash on every flash page that used flash ... :(

i just removed it and am using the macromedia thingy now, if you really want a gpl replacement pls try to avoid stupid errors like divizion by zero and others alike ... none will use your plugin if it crashes their browsers :S

make it work & i'll use it

Nice Google Summer of Code project

[kappa]

Really. This is quite obviously a job that one would like to get some money for. Such rewritings aren't usually doing well on pure enthusiasm.

I wish I were a student, yes.

Not until

[taj]

The first thing a flash project needs is a 100% reliable flash blocking filter system. Honestly I dont see the point.

I maybe wish I had flash once a month. And for that I'm expected to watch 100 flash advertisments a day? I like that broken icon.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[91degrees]

Because moderators are idiots who really need to look up some of these terms in a dictionary.

Solutions: SVG Authoring Tools

[wombatmobile]

.

Beatware Mobile Designer

Ikivo Animator

SVG smartphones shipping now.

[OT] SVG in Firefox

[wild_berry]

The SVG implementation is there in Deer Park, the test version of Firefox 1.1. Examples here

Re:Gentlemen

[m50d]

5 is the marketing name, 1.5 is the real name. Anyway, C/C++ still works on my proc, python works, even mono works, kde works, OOo works, unreal tournament works, everything I want to use works. Why should I have to upgrade? It's only java that's so incredibly bloated, everything else manages.

Re:Bwa ha ha! Another chance to kill Flash-based a

[Dogtanian]

I'll probably check that out; though I should make clear that I don't hate all ads- just pop-ups and animated banner ads.

Static or Google text-ads are fine...

Re:Gentlemen

[m50d]

I've got 384mb, I don't think it's ram. Anyway, java is fine for performance on console apps, it just crawls with gui. This isn't even a problem with java, just swing. It's not even a problem with swing, just sun's particular implementation of it. (If you did swing as a c library that called xlib, rather than drawing all the pixels in java, I'm sure it would zoom). But the way java is, swing is the standard gui so everyone uses it, and sun's implementation is the only one available that works for most java progs. So any gui java app is intolerably slow.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Shaper_pmp]

Not to troll, but what else should they have used?

It's not Offtopic, Flamebait (at least not intentionally, despite all the people panning it), or a Troll. It's not Redundant (because nobody else had posted a logo), but it's certainly not Insightful, Interesting, Informative or intentionally Funny. It's certainly not Underrated.

In the absence of "-1 Boring" or "-1 Not Very Good Artwork", what is there to mod it so people won't waste their time reading it?

Frankly (and apologies, Wikinerd - nothing against you), even Posting it at 1 is a bit overrated - there are plenty of Anonymous Coward posts I've read which were vastly more interesting, entertaining or informative than this one. So someone modded it Overrated - what's wrong with that?

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Enigma_Man]

Jeff Albertson

-Jesse

Re:Link to its homepage!

[drsquare]

As far as I'm aware, the whole point of modding down a post that's currently at '1' is to censor it from the majority who read at '1'. Yeah the logo's crap, but does the post need moderating down? Is it really that disruptive that people need to be sheltered from it? At least he tried, there's no point punishing him by making him lose karma (which in this climate of flooding bots could be enough to get him a lengthy automatic ban).

And with the long discussion following it, anyone browsing at 1+ will wonder what the hell everyone's talking about and will have to click 'parent' to see the original post anyway, defeating the whole purpose of moderating it down.

The way I see it, moderating a post below '1' should only be done for crapfloods, like the bot that copies posts from other threads, or for first posts, or that story about the dirty old gay man in the garden. Moderation should be for marking out the really good posts, not for censoring posts you don't like.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Dasch]

The server has some moronic hotlink prevention. Just copy and paste the URL to the address bar. That ought to do it.

Re:Link to its homepage!

[drsquare]

I dunno, when I saw the post it was at 0, iwth 100% overrated. When I post I don't even touch the bit that selects karma bonus, and my posts end up at +1, I don't really even know how the thing even works. Sorry if I'm rambling or my spelling is off but I'm a bit drunk at the moment.

An opportunity to put things right

[Trogre]

I would support such a project if it included the following, none of which is provided by Macromedia Flash for Linux:

- Persistent quality (antialiasing) settings
- Correct sound synchronisation (configurable a la mplayer if need be)
- CPU usage throttle (or a 'nice' value I guess).
- Renders all SWFs designed for Windows correctly (in many cases Linux Flash plays the wrong sound at the wrong time - very frustrating for language pronounciation programs.)
- Fullscreen mode, at different resolutions (again a la mplayer)

Interesting Point, what does 'Slow' Mean?

[f0rt0r]

If by slow, he means, ceterus paribus, if I run an application implemented in language A and then run it implemented in version B, one is less responsive
( i.e. does few actions in the same amount of time, perhaps includes the delay from the time I click on a button to the time the application reacts to that click ), then Java is slower than say, C++ or C( and perhaps even Flash/Flash Actionscript ). If you only care about the CPU being the same between the two tests ( meaning you can change the memory, system bus speed, etc ), then Java may still be a little 'slow', but better than in the first example I gave. Of course, you may simply just by CPU cycles, and with all of the converting/translation between byte code and binary code that goes on in Java (2), then Java will surely be slow relative to applications that start off in a form "native" to the system they are running on.

Just some of my thoughts on the subject. Personnally I like the idea of Java, and was even thinking of doing all my apps in it, but currently I think it is best suited to Server-Side applications. I do use java apps like Eclipse, and have heard good things about Jedit.

Full speed ahead!

[Lotharjade]

Well, I think we should adopt that worst logo ever for this flash project. the logo would read, "Sticking it to Macromedia since..."

Re:Link to its homepage!

[Shaper_pmp]

IIRC:

Anonymous Cowards post at 0.

Signed-in Slashdot users automatically post at +1, unless you specifically select the "Post without Karma bonus" checkbox when posting.

Signed-in Slashdot users with good karma (I believe "Excellent" or above - is there an "above"?) post at +2.

Default user settings read at 0+.

HTH.