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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.
...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?
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.