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Adobe Makes Flash on GNU/Linux Chrome-Only
ekimd writes "Adobe has anounced their plans to abandon future updates of their Flash player for Linux. Partnering with Google, after the release of 11.2, 'the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the 'Pepper' API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe.' Viva la HTML 5!"
And it appears that Mozilla won't be implementing Pepper anytime soon.
"And it appears that Mozilla won't be implementing Pepper anytime soon."
Why?
Flash is on its deathbed anyway.
All the existing Flash animations and games on Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, Kongregate, and Newgrounds are likely to keep SWF on life support for a very long time, be it through Adobe Flash Player or through Gnash.
How does putting "GNU" before "Linux" indicate it runs X11? The X Window System isn't a GNU project, nor is it licensed under the GPL.
If you care enough and agree with RMS about the "GNU/Linux" naming issue, you shouldn't have been running Flash in the first place.
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
Hmm, there's this little app called Photoshop that might keep them afloat for a while.
If your bank is using flash for account management you need to get a new bank.
They also should have supported ActiveX, right?
Goodbye Adobe? I must have missed all the articles recently where they announced their decision to mothball their industry-standard tools for image manipulation, post-production, print design, web-prototyping and image workflow.
Flash is a tiny part of what Abobe does, don't expect them to be going anywhere soon.
I've been doing rich client development in Flash ever since 2000 and to me the Flash Player for x86/Linux was a big selling point. True x-platform RTE with a huge amount of awesome features and a very good programming language with AS2 and AS3. A free cli compiler for all major platforms including Linux and an awesome workflow for building custom UIs with the Flash IDE.
I don't think there will be such a widespread and powerfull platform again in the future - it's a shame Adobe missed out on the whole touch revolution in the Flash dept. Just last year I bought my last stack of OReillys for Flex and AS development for a project I had. ... Guess that will have been my last. Just this morning I though of stashing them away to make room for my new C++ stack.
For me, one thing is for sure: As awesome as Flash was, it is the one and only proprietary platform and technology I will ever have invested significant time in. From here on out it's only truely OSI compliant FOSS technologies and PLs for me. That was also the main reason I didn't move into Unity3D when I was doing game development a while back.
Flash/AS it was a great 11 years. You will be missed.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
For videos it's quite fine (I tested youtube and vimeo), but most interactive stuff doesn't work, e.g. games or interactive charts etc.
:)
The really nice thing about gnash ist the platform independence. No problem to watch a video on an old iBook with a Power CPU running Linux. Try that with the adobe player
From the press release:
"Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release."
If we believe the (mainstream) migration from Flash to HTML5 will be accomplished in that timeframe, I don't see this being a big issue for Firefox or other Linux browsers not using the Pepper API
In addition to the tons of legacy content that will never be converted (due to limitations in tools, or abandonment), there is a lot of new content for which HTML 5 in not appropriate.
For example, there are a lot of nice video streaming services out there, and they all have been forced to use some sort of DRM by content providers. While I refuse to accept DRM on products I buy, I don't have an issue with it for rental/subscription services as long as it is available on the platforms I use, which can be an issue even without DRM. With Silverlight DRM not being included in Moonlight, you already could not watch Netflix and some live sports, now with Flash being discontinued for Linux, there will be no way to watch Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, or any of the streaming video provided by networks. This is a use of Flash that HTML5 will never replace, because of valid ideological differences in the purpose of open web standards.
I don't consider a tool that is used for 90% of commercial video streaming, with no migration path to other tools to be "on its deathbed".
Looks like they have an implementation of the PPAPI:
http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/pepper-plugin-implementation
Actually, no apparently. And, if I do, I have native apps on my iPad for them ... none of them are running Flash.
Awesome, so the solution to replacing a small proprietary plugin like Flash is to buy an entirely proprietary OS and/or device.
HTML V5 is gonna be locked down tighter than a nun's thighs and is controlled by one of the most aggressive patent trolls there has ever been and THAT is good? Has everyone kinda had a senior moment and forgot that H.264 is patented up the ass and is controlled by a conglomeration that will happily sue your ass if you look at them funny?
Well, most flash video is H.264 too, it's pretty hard to argue that HTML5/H.264 will be worse than Flash/H.264. Right now the alternatives to H.264 are as dead as Ogg Theora was to music but since everybody's blocking each other I assume the status quo will be maintained until the H.264 patents expire in the 2020s. You're pretending like this achieves something but I don't see how, except to continue promoting flash over HTML. You may notice that all the other players that now play YouTube videos dropped flash, but continue to use H.264. There's absolutely zero traction for moving away.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And to make sure they don't come back:
rm -rf ~/.macromedia; ln -s /dev/null ~/.macromedia