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Interview With Linux Flash Player's Lead Engineer
An anonymous reader writes, "Ryan Stewart of ZDNet has an interview with Mike Melanson, the lead engineer behind Adobe's upcoming Flash Player 9 for Linux. It covers what the plans are for the player, what kinds of things won't be in the Linux player that are in the other players, and ways to give Adobe input on the Linux player."
Good, no need to start my browser with alsa-oss anymore if I want the mixer to work (So that multiple sound sources can play at the same time), or having the flash hogging the sound device.
from one of these companies is going to contain a rootkit tailor-made for Linux.
I, for one, will not forget why I'm using a free (Open Source) platform. It sure
as hell aint for viewing snazzier adverts. Let's also not forget alternatives like
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
This is not an indictment of Mike, I'm sure he's a nice guy.
I'm not a zealot --I use closed video drivers, but these kinds of needless (IMO) upgrades
just smell like trouble to me. And for the record, Flash 7 has performed flawlessly for me
on Debian Testing...
Stopping? No, you're right. However it's not the same as PDF, PDF was (is) an open standard, they told people how to make viewers on various platforms with various tools, it's the main reason it caught on so quickly and so strongly.
As a friend of mine explained, the computer world is much differrent now, there isn't umpteen different OSs that companies have to deal with, in fact, they could (and do) get away with only supporting one. The percentage of Windows users is so high as to make everything else not even appear on many charts. The second and third places are covered by OS X and Linux, but those are so small compared to Windows that many companies don't even take a second glance.
I think this is very bad as it only makes people gravitate towards Windows more, thus making a vicious cycle. I think it would be wonderful if more companies started seeing the advantages of open standards and open source. Apple doesn't make the money on iTunes, it makes it from the store and iPods, so why not make the pprogram open source?
I got really pissed at Adobe recently for their idiotic canned support emails ("You seem to be having trouble with , you can find help with that at our FAQ, if you need more help please reply to this email" Dude, if your FAQ had the answers I was looking for I wouldn't have emailed you...). It sucks that a) there hasn't been a new flash player for linux for quite a while and b) there has never been one for AMD64. Having had several back-and-forth emails with Adobe support I got the sinking impression that the Linux versions had been dropped and were never going to be updated. I'm glad this is not true, and I applaud Adobe for doing the (mostly) right thing in releasing a Linux version of their player. Of course, if they opened the standard we'd get better flash players quicker and they wouldn't have to pay as many people to do it, win-win, if you ask me.
I don't understand why more companies aren't seeing the advantages of open source, but at least some of them aren't ignoring us completely.
There is a open source flash player, though it doesn't work too well.
...I've got to say that this long-winded dragout of the next Linux version of Flash Player (hey, isn't both 8 final and 9 beta out for Windows already - neither of which we've seen in *any form* for Linux?) is getting rather tiresome. Sadly, the current Linux Flash development "team" (who is involved exactly in writing the Linux-specific code? The article doesn't really spell it out - you do suspect only one person has been assigned to do that and Adobe don't want to publicly admit that) haven't helped by spinning things out with their blog.
I find it amazing that "obvious" steps haven't been taken by the Linux Flash team, namely:
* Some sort of release schedule announcement - don't care if it slips by a few weeks here and there.
* A set of pre-releases (heck, have them time-bomb out if you don't want them being used in the long-term) coming out to showcase its current alpha/beta/RC status. Note here - Windows gets beta releases, why can't Linux?! It's utterly shameful there is no pre-release version for Linux, especially since the latest Linux Flash blog entries brag how stable the player now is at all the major sites it's been tested on!
* A definitive statement on whether they'll support 64-bit (i.e. "it'll be released at the same time as the 32-bit version" or "it'll be released X months after the 32-bit version" or "it'll never be released"). Sadly, Adobe are somewhat pig-ignorant w.r.t. the 64-bit platform and don't even have a 64-bit version for XP!
* Explain the exact differences between, say, Windows Flash 9 and Linux Flash 9 - there's some woolly stuff on this in the article really. After all this time in incubation, you'd have thought that the two platforms would have identical version 9 players, but I wouldn't it past Adobe to release a half-baked Linux Flash 9 player, since they have not yet demonstrated to anyone at all that they take Linux seriously (does the word "vapourware" mean anything to Adobe? That's exactly what Flash 8/9 on Linux currently are).
* Start a merge of the Linux development environment and the Windows one, so that ultimately they work from the same codebase to avoid the ridiculous delays in platform releases we've seen in the past. It's not clear to me if the Linux effort is fragmented - have we been told how much code is common on all platforms and how much is specific to Linux (and how they keep the specific code to a minimum)?
* Open Source the player! If Adobe have coded the entire player in-house (which I believe they have), then why not Open Source it...it's a free download after all! Even if they've patented some methods used in the source code, they own the patents and the copyright on the source code, so that shouldn't stop them open-sourcing it surely? Just exactly what is Adobe's objection to open sourcing the player? Sheer bloody-mindedness?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
There are 2 big reasons why it is unlikely that Macromedia will change and allow the spec to be used to build players.
Firstly, just like with Sun and Java but much more so, flash truely is "develop once, run anywhere". Any web browser on any platform running the relavent version of the flash player plugin for that platform can play any shockwave flash file out there. (which is probobly why web designers love it so much...)
And, just like Sun and Java, if Macromedia goes open source or open specs, how can they be sure that "GnuFlash" can play ALL the flash files the same as how the Macromedia player can.
The other reason is the mobile devices space (PDAs, cellphones, smartphones etc). Right now, Macromedia is pushing heavily into the mobile space and trying to convince mobile device manufacturers to ship "flash for mobile devices". I dont know details but I imagine mobile device makers have to pay Macromedia to ship "flash for mobile devices" in their device (especially when a source code licence is required and its not just a binary provided by Macromedia). If the specs or code were open, the mobile device manufacturers wouldnt need to pay macromedia.
You could have made that point without even trolling. From the interview:
Q: How big is the team working on the Linux version of the Flash Player?
A: There is a core team working on porting and testing. There are various volunteers within the organization who have jumped into the effort out of general platform enthusiasm; and if we need any advice with particular areas, we bring in people from the rest of the Flash Player team as needed. Of course, we're not making cheese sandwiches here. Throwing more programmers, any programmers, at the problem will not necessarily speed the process along.
At this point, if I was interviewing, I would have realized that he didn't give me any information at all. Yes, *every* project has a "core team". Thank you for stating the obvious, but that didn't answer my question.
Proposed follow-up: "So do you not know how big the core team is, or is it a secret?"
Why does anyone need a 64-bit version anyhow?
Because on our 64-bit operating systems (both Linux and Windows), applications run in 64-bit mode. It's the norm.
AND FLASH DOESN'T RUN IN OUR BROWSERS BECAUSE 64-BIT APPS CAN'T CALL Macromedia's 32-BIT CODE !!!!!
So the simple answer is, we need a 64-bit version to see any Flash pages at all.
And Macromedia have known that for 3-4 years, yet they do bugger all about it. (There are a few hacks to allow some people to overcome the problem, but they're not at all generic.)
As others have commented, Macromedia are just totally inept and unyielding on this topic, and this current bit of PR shows it even more plainly. "Make suggestions on the Adobe Wish Form", he says. Christ, we've been doing that for ***YEARS***, and we've been totally ignored by Adobe.
They couldn't give a rat's arse about customers. It's that kind of company.
Sounds like you agree that amd64 is different to other architectures like sparc, in that most programs perform as well or better in 64-bit mode, not just ones with needs for large data etc. Perhaps then it makes sense to reverse the bias compared to sparc - all programs on x86-64 should probably be 64-bit unless there are significant benefits to making a particular app 32-bit.
I've thought about the idea of using extra registers in 32-bit mode.... but the resulting binary wouldn't run on an ordinary x86 anymore since it would address registers that don't exist. And once you're incompatible, you have a new architecture. Which we could then call x86-64... bringing us back to where we started