Adobe Pushing For Flash TVs
Drivintin writes "In a move that should make cable companies nervous, Adobe announces they are going to push a Flash that runs directly on TVs. 'Adobe Systems, which owns the technology and sells the tools to create and distribute it, wants to extend Flash's reach even further. On Monday, Adobe's chief executive, Shantanu Narayen, will announce at the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas that Adobe is extending Flash to the television screen. He expects TVs and set-top boxes that support the Flash format to start selling later this year.' With the ability to run Hulu, YouTube and others, the question of dropping your cable becomes a little bit more reasonable."
Adobe's press release here, BBC's article here
Meta will eat itself
another proprietary piece of crap
Wake up, it's 2009 already. Adobe has published the SWF specification (version 10, no less) almost a year ago.
The specs are open (without restrictions), the VM is even open source. I don't know how much more open they could be other than open-sourcing the renderer part of their player (which they can't do due to third-party licenses) or submitting it to a standards body.
I think Rob Savoye of Gnash, the GPL Flash project would beg to differ on it's relevance. I recommend viewing the whole interview as he touches on the subject of legal traps in Adobe's agreements which you need to sign if you want to get the specification.