Dean, I question the sensibility also. My guess is that Adobe does NOT want developers to create small products that use FMS, rather they want only BIG businesses to have the competitive advantages that FMS offers. This would insure big money and little competition. They don't want lots of little innovators creating video chat, conferencing tools, voip applications, intranet media servers, etc. Rather they'd like to BE the company selling those things as services over and over again, or be charging other big companies oogles of money on a larger scale.
I don't think that's true. I've said before that in the absence of communication, people tend to think the worst. We (MM/Adobe) have not done a great job of explaining our product decisions, so I understand the suspicion.
I don't really think that innovators creating cool applications is in any way a threat to Adobe's business. In fact, and I'm sure you'd agree, it helps our business by showing people what you can do with our technology.
Adobe can make money selling tools(and end-to-end solutions) to large business, gov't, EDU, etc and still foster innovation by small developers.
Large clients aren't going to go with small, unproven software vendors. Adobe can't sell full service solutions to very small business (i.e. we can't send out a team of engineers and consultants to every client that purchases FMS - only the ones that are large revenue opportunities).
there is plenty of room for both sides of this equation to do well and grow businesses.
The FMS team is a very small, focused group - basically a start-up inside a large corporation. We can only work on a few projects at a time, and the ones we choose (or that are chosen for us by larger Adobe relationships) are usually based on maximum ROI. So, the development that you see publicly is tends to trend towards the needs of large business - the features/needs of small business and developers tend to follow soon after.
I'm not saying it's the best way, or that this response will justify anything, but I just wanted to emphasize that we do NOT want to shut out small developers.
"I'm not saying it's the best way, or that this response will justify anything, but I just wanted to emphasize that we do NOT want to shut out small developers."
--
But that is what happens. I was lucky and bought 5 FCS 1.5 licenses on the day FCS2 was announced. This will keep me in licenses until August. After that we will have to switch to XML socket server. We simply cannot buy a license at $5890 (european price). We love FCS, but we cannot use it at that price.
Hi Steve,
First of all, thanks for supporting this FMS blog. It's a great idea, and I hope to see alot of great perspectives from FMS developers.
I'm currently leading a team developing a 'virtual classroom' type application using FMS/FCS at a major internet company. FMS is a great product, and we are really starting to get our arms around all the capabilities it provides.
It was also very exciting to talk to the FMS engineers at Anahiem.
I note your reply to @aardvark with interest.
One of the requirements for our current project involving FMS is the ability for a 'Presenter' type user to capture their laptop or desktop screens, and stream it to FMS. (aka Remote Desktop Sharing)
This requires that some driver be installed on a Presenter's machine and
a custom 'broadcast' flash app developed to read from that driver, and streamed to FMS.
We have already done this, but we've had issues with the performance of the screen capture drivers we've tested.
I note with interest that the Breeze product (built on FMS) has this capability, but it is not available to FMS developers.
I was wondering if you could give me your (or Adobe's) perspective on why this is the case.
I'm not thinking the worst of Adobe/MM here, but one perspective might be that Adobe is trying to protect the Breeze product revenue streams by excluding functionality at the expense of FMS developers, who are trying to develop the innovative applications you mention.
Our team has evaluated Breeze, and it's a fine product, but it simply is not suited to our needs.
We are certainly not trying to build a product to compete with Breeze.
I'm thinking this could be a cause of serious concern to FMS developers.
but one perspective might be that Adobe is trying to protect the Breeze product revenue streams by excluding functionality at the expense of FMS developers, who are trying to develop the innovative applications you mention.
I honestly don't know enough about the Breeze business model to know if/how screen sharing in FMS would hurt it. However, there are technical reasons why this won't work in FMS - to do screen sharing, Breeze uses a special add-in to the Flash player. This add-in was not designed to be used by applications other than Breeze. From what the player and FMS engineers have told me, the cost of making it bulletproof for general use is apparently very high. I don’t really know of any ulterior motives - the reason screen sharing is not in FMS now is purely technical.
Comments
Ok Steve, I am excited to see what happens.
Posted by: sean moran | January 25, 2006 12:16 PM
I hope Adobe/MM come out with official info about the Dynamo license.
Cross fingers...
--
dott. daniele galiffa
multimedia designer and developer
Macromedia FlashMX Developer Certified
daniele@mentegrafica.it
Posted by: Daniele Galiffa | January 25, 2006 12:20 PM
Hi Steve,
why are adobe so against a personal edition 10 connection version of FMS2 as per the old 1.5.
My company was projected to sell 100 of these at $450 each and now we will sell ZERO at $4500
How does this make economic sense.
Looking forward to your reply.
Dean
Posted by: dean collins | January 25, 2006 12:51 PM
Dean, I question the sensibility also. My guess is that Adobe does NOT want developers to create small products that use FMS, rather they want only BIG businesses to have the competitive advantages that FMS offers. This would insure big money and little competition. They don't want lots of little innovators creating video chat, conferencing tools, voip applications, intranet media servers, etc. Rather they'd like to BE the company selling those things as services over and over again, or be charging other big companies oogles of money on a larger scale.
Posted by: aardvark | January 25, 2006 01:21 PM
@aardvark -
I don't think that's true. I've said before that in the absence of communication, people tend to think the worst. We (MM/Adobe) have not done a great job of explaining our product decisions, so I understand the suspicion.
I don't really think that innovators creating cool applications is in any way a threat to Adobe's business. In fact, and I'm sure you'd agree, it helps our business by showing people what you can do with our technology.
Adobe can make money selling tools(and end-to-end solutions) to large business, gov't, EDU, etc and still foster innovation by small developers.
Large clients aren't going to go with small, unproven software vendors. Adobe can't sell full service solutions to very small business (i.e. we can't send out a team of engineers and consultants to every client that purchases FMS - only the ones that are large revenue opportunities).
there is plenty of room for both sides of this equation to do well and grow businesses.
The FMS team is a very small, focused group - basically a start-up inside a large corporation. We can only work on a few projects at a time, and the ones we choose (or that are chosen for us by larger Adobe relationships) are usually based on maximum ROI. So, the development that you see publicly is tends to trend towards the needs of large business - the features/needs of small business and developers tend to follow soon after.
I'm not saying it's the best way, or that this response will justify anything, but I just wanted to emphasize that we do NOT want to shut out small developers.
Posted by: steve | January 25, 2006 02:01 PM
"I'm not saying it's the best way, or that this response will justify anything, but I just wanted to emphasize that we do NOT want to shut out small developers."
--
But that is what happens. I was lucky and bought 5 FCS 1.5 licenses on the day FCS2 was announced. This will keep me in licenses until August. After that we will have to switch to XML socket server. We simply cannot buy a license at $5890 (european price). We love FCS, but we cannot use it at that price.
Posted by: Thomas Nesse | January 26, 2006 05:23 AM
Hi Steve,
First of all, thanks for supporting this FMS blog. It's a great idea, and I hope to see alot of great perspectives from FMS developers.
I'm currently leading a team developing a 'virtual classroom' type application using FMS/FCS at a major internet company. FMS is a great product, and we are really starting to get our arms around all the capabilities it provides.
It was also very exciting to talk to the FMS engineers at Anahiem.
I note your reply to @aardvark with interest.
One of the requirements for our current project involving FMS is the ability for a 'Presenter' type user to capture their laptop or desktop screens, and stream it to FMS. (aka Remote Desktop Sharing)
This requires that some driver be installed on a Presenter's machine and
a custom 'broadcast' flash app developed to read from that driver, and streamed to FMS.
We have already done this, but we've had issues with the performance of the screen capture drivers we've tested.
I note with interest that the Breeze product (built on FMS) has this capability, but it is not available to FMS developers.
I was wondering if you could give me your (or Adobe's) perspective on why this is the case.
I'm not thinking the worst of Adobe/MM here, but one perspective might be that Adobe is trying to protect the Breeze product revenue streams by excluding functionality at the expense of FMS developers, who are trying to develop the innovative applications you mention.
Our team has evaluated Breeze, and it's a fine product, but it simply is not suited to our needs.
We are certainly not trying to build a product to compete with Breeze.
I'm thinking this could be a cause of serious concern to FMS developers.
Thank you for your time,
Burt
Posted by: Burt | January 26, 2006 11:18 AM
Burt_
I honestly don't know enough about the Breeze business model to know if/how screen sharing in FMS would hurt it. However, there are technical reasons why this won't work in FMS - to do screen sharing, Breeze uses a special add-in to the Flash player. This add-in was not designed to be used by applications other than Breeze. From what the player and FMS engineers have told me, the cost of making it bulletproof for general use is apparently very high. I don’t really know of any ulterior motives - the reason screen sharing is not in FMS now is purely technical.
-steve.
Posted by: steve | January 26, 2006 09:19 PM