Why Won't Macromedia Release 64-bit Flash?

Flashless Dancer asks: "Despite numerous online campaigns, blogs and forum postings, Macromedia has failed to release a 64 bit version of it's popular Flash Player for 64 bit architectures. Growing outcry in the Linux community recently spawned the online petition at PetitionOnline, but this seems to have fallen on deaf ears. A recent posting to Macromedia's technotes, back in September, offers this explanation and advice to users and developers who are growing increasingly concerned that users with 64 bit architectures are unable to view online content created with Flash. It explains that users must downgrade to 32 bit browsers and use the 32 bit plugin. This simply isn't a good option for most users, in fact many Linux distributions, including FC2/3/4 install 64-bit browsers with their 64-bit distributions. This seems to breathe new life into the old GplFlash Project which is now back, after some time on the back burner. Future development of GplFlash2 promises support for Flash 6/7 but remains in development for now. Open speculation in chatrooms and web forums alleges all sorts of conspiracy theories but, what I'd like to know is: What's the real difficulty here for Macromedia?"

Comments

Re:A better way to look at it

[zeath]

Here is a link to the generic letter

a correction

[bersl2]

I just noticed that a few things have been committed to CVS in the past week. Yay!

And just when I think that I've done enough fact-checking...

Re:Simple economics

[dtfinch]

Macromedia sells to web developers, who might want their creations to run anywhere. They might even want to test/debug their creations on their own 64 bit desktops.

Re:Alternative architecture or leading edge hardwa

[baadger]

"It's not all that hard to buy an AMD64 machine with Windows XP"

It's not all that hard to buy an AMD64 machine with Windows XP 32-bit Edition. This of course renders most 64-bit goodness moot. I have yet to see a machine in any of the major high street and online shops (read: where most people still get their PC's from) that ships with XP x64, I guess because it's only available in it's 'Professional' flavour - not the shockingly different 'Home' flavour.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Don't expect the majority of people to be properly 64-bit enabled until Longhorn and a bit (for OS turnover in the consumer world). One of the umpteen LH flavours is sure to support your nice juicy new processor.

One question, are "modern Pentium 4 chips", "64-bit capable"? And to what extent? I wasn't aware any of the P4's were in anyway 64-bit (atleast no corny dun-dun-dun-dun adverts on TV bragging about 'Intel 64-bit technology' yet)

Re:They're hiring

[imr]

Porting the Flash Player to 'alternative' platforms
and it pretty much explains that there won't be a 64 bits version as long as they don't find a guru that will rewrite this beast. Not portable.

Re:But 32 bit flash works on my 64 bit box

[floamy]

That only works because your distribution installed 32bit libraries and is using emulation. If your distribution was 64bit, or you didn't want to use a different set of libraries for Mozilla, you wouldn't be able to run Flash.

Re:*ahem*

[Slashcrap]

Yeah, when I try to visit homestar runner on my 64-bit PowerMac G5, I... oh, wait--it works.

That's probably because OSX is still almost entirely 32bit.

I'm sure that once Apple catch up you'll experience the same issue.

Re:wasn't clear

[ajs318]

Debian is 64-bit only. If you want to run 32-bit applications, you have to do so under a chroot. This keeps it pure in two ways: every userland program is 64-bit, and there's a reasonable chance that every userland program is Open Source.