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Lightspark 0.4.2 Open Source Flash Player Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the gotta-start-somewhere dept.

suraj.sun writes "The Lightspark project has released version 0.4.2 of its free, open source Flash player. According to Lightspark developer Alessandro Pignotti, the alternative Flash Player implementation is 'designed from the ground up to be efficient on current and (hopefully) future hardware.' The latest release of Lightspark features better compatibility with YouTube videos, sound synchronization support and the ability to use fontconfig for font selection. Other changes include plug-in support for Google's Chrome/Chromium web browser and support for Firefox's out of process plug-in (OOPP) mode, which was added in version 3.6.4 of the browser."

10 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. What about license? by DMiax · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I seem to remember that the real problem Flash clones is that documentation is not completely free and if you read it you have to be under strong NDA for the rest of your life. This should also be why Gnash always lags behind. How did he overcome this issue? Or are we waiting for a lawsuit to strike as soon as the plugin becomes usable?

  2. which one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    By my count there are atleast 4 opensource flash project. Most of them seem to exist just for the developer's own benefit. Is there any analysis or review and comparison of the several open source flash clones?

  3. Re:embrace and extend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Now that open source has embraces the flash standard, no doubt Adobe will add proprietary additions so sow incompatibility.

    The protentially nice thing about this howerve is that if
    1) it's efficient
    2) not buggy
    3) supports DRM

    4)has the potential to run on 64 bit and ARM platforms.

    5) there is a windows version planned (i loathe having to have any adobe product installed).

  4. Re:embrace and extend by sortius_nod · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you had used flash on a mac you'd probably change your tune. Adobe have almost abandoned apple when most of their apps started on mac os. I can understand apple saying "fuck off" to adobe after the bullshit they've pulled over recent years.

  5. Re:Gnash? by ink · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Gnash doesn't support ActionScript 3. Lightspark does. There has been talk on the Gnash list for a hybrid solution.

    --
    The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
  6. Re:The best feature they could add... by Nerdfest · · Score: 1, Interesting

    That sort of reply is now mandatory for any open source related story. It is now formally referred to as "Anonymous Coward's Law".

  7. No Windows? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I would gladly run this instead of adobe flash if it ran on windows. Flash is the kind of thing I use lightly enough that I wouldn't mind reporting bugs and trying to help out that way.

  8. Re:That's just as wrong as mono by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Oh come off it! Almost all of them have proprietary predecessors that implemented the same functionality.
    • i386 protected mode OS: prior art in Unix, mainframe OS's, VMS... any 32-bit OS that used an MMU. If we must be specific to the 386 (why?) then I think even then Xenix did this first.
    • ext2/3: dozens of earlier (proprietary) filesystems had the same capabilities first, whether we are talking about basic filesystem capabilities or journalling.
    • emacs: hardly the first text editor, emacs' only innovation was stealing Vi's crown by making text editing even more difficult.
    • Perl, Python and others: whether these count as programming languages, virtual machines or scripting environments, there is a tonne of proprietary prior art, from C/Fortran to KSH and JCL.
    • decss: just a reverse-engineered reimplementation of CSS surely?
    • bayesian spam filtering: ok, you win this time... but if email wasn't the classic example of a badly thought out open standard that we're now stuck with, this wouldn't be needed.
    • eclipse: pick your proprietary IDE; most likely it predates Eclipse.

    While all of these things are valuable (except Perl and Emacs), they are hardly new inventions. Bit of intellectual honesty please!

  9. Needs a windows version by Dwedit · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Flash Player is a bloated slow pig of a program. Windows users need a Flash Player alternative just as much as Linux users do.

    So when I hear about a release, I look for the Standalone EXE player, which unfortunately doesn't exist.

    I also wonder how this compares to Gnash. I've tested out Gnash, and it crashed on several SWF files I played through the program on Windows. Gnash also obviously wasn't designed at all to run on Windows, since it is missing the essential feature of Drag-Drop files onto the standalone player window.

  10. Re:Hulu by jonwil · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Any open source Flash clone that added support for the encrypted version of the RTMP streaming protocol (which is what Hulu and others use) would be hit by a DMCA lawsuit.
    If Adobe doesn't do EVERYTHING it can legally do to prevent programs that can save encrypted RTMP streams (or programs that can be modified to save such streams) sites like Hulu will go to their competitor or shut down altogether.

    Hell will freeze over before NBC, Fox and ABC (the owners of Hulu) will allow their content to be distributed in a way that would allow people to save permanent unprotected copies to their PCs.