Open at Adobe

It's time to step up and volunteer folks.  It's obvious that Verizon needs a Advisory Board at the highest levels.

Based on the comments from Sean Michael Kerner on internetnews , the Verizon CEo doesn't understand the impact of open source, or even can successfully parse the question.

What's even more interesting is this report from Cnet, "Verizon switches programmers to Linux" So in spite of saving millions in 2002, the CEO doesn't recognize open source.

Or this one from linux-watch, in which Linux is chosen as the Verizon mobile platform.

My CEO can tell you what open source is. I suspect yours does too.

Anyway, I'm more than willing to serve a couple of years to help the good folks at Verizon understand the impact open source can and does have on their business every day.  And I'll even throw in some free consultations to the board.

Posted by Dave McAllister at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There seems to be a lot of angst over the fact that the SWF specification is only covered by copyright. So lets take a moment to discuss this.

I'm not a lawyer, though I get to spend a lot of time around them in relation to standards and open source work. So here goes.

First, the specification is a document. It describes the SWF file format. It's like a book (albeit a short one). You, the reader don't need a license to read a book.

Open nearly any book and you'll see a copyright notice basically saying you can't copy the book. Same thing here

In fact, let's think of this as a cookbook. There are some pretty interesting recipes (SWF, FLV/F4V, AMF) that are there. You can certainly bake a SWF "cake" based on the recipe, and you don't need our permission to do so. You might have to buy some exotic ingredients that the recipe calls for to get it exactly like the lovely illustrative pictures, but you don't expect the cookbook to contain all your ingredients. And while some places provide ingredients for free (such as Tamarin or Flex SDK), not all ingredients are equally free (just as codecs aren't free even to us).

You buy your ingredients (or grow them, if you wish), you use the SWF recipe to bake it, and  voila, a SWF-powered application.

Now, as with nearly every product, specification, etc around, there's other interesting text.  Trademarks, references to other links, no offer of warranty on the contents. Again, absolutely normal. If you build it, you can't call it by our trademark names. If you use  someone else's materials, we aren't responsible for the contents.  (Here, think of using a oven to bake that cake.  We aren't responsible for bad eggs someone else sells you, nor if you mislabeled salt as sugar). And it's absolutely standard for no warranty to be extended.  Your "cake" is completely under your control, and we aren't responsible for how it turns out.

SO, no copyright traps. Feel free to write your own software that implements the specification. Since the specification does not include source code, you can't infringe our source code.

So, we'll look into ways to clarify the issues, but bottom line is that the specification is open and ready for you to cook up a storm.

Posted by Dave McAllister at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

At the recent Internet World conference in London, Nitot of Mozilla made several remarks that included Adobe as an threat to the open nature of the internet.

Needless to say to those who watch the space, some of Nitot’s comments don’t reflect reality. I’d like to take a moment to clarify issues about Adobe Flash Player Adobe support for Linux, and Adobe open efforts.

Adobe delivered Flash Player 7 for Linux back in 2004. Flash Player 9 for Linux is now available and in 2007 Adobe committed to release future versions of Flash Player Linux simultaneously with Windows and Macintosh. I have Flash Player on my Macintosh OSX 10.5, Ubuntu 8.04, and Windows XP. Go here to see the version you have for yourself (http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_15507)

My version shows 9.0.124.0 on all of them. While I didn't test it, I'm told you can also add Solaris to that list as well.

It’s true we aren’t able to support every single Linux distribution and we know that Linux users want Flash Player for 64b Linux. But Adobe works hard to support the most popular distributions for Flash Player (and Adobe Reader) just as we do with the other operating systems.

Adobe may not deliver all of our software as open source but we firmly believe in the power of the open web. Flash Player isn’t open source. But Adobe, with a group of industry partners just announced the Open Screen Project. As our part of the project, Adobe removed all restrictions on using the file format that drives the Flash technologies, SWF and FLV/F4V. With the release of AMF in February along with BlazeDS, and an upcoming release of Flash Cast, Adobe is equally committed to making sure the web, at least our part, stays open.

Other open activities from Adobe include contributing the ActionScript Virtual Machine as open source to Mozilla’s Tamarin project. This is the same open source AVM in Flash Player 9 and Adobe AIR. Adobe is actively engaged in the Tamarin project. Providing Flex -- a free open source framework for building RIAs, which includes the source to the ActionScript components from the Flex SDK, the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers, and the ActionScript debugger from the SDK. Additionally, other major portions of Adobe AIR, such as Webkit (the HTML engine) and SQLite for the local database functionality are open source today.

The power of the web is found in its global reach, open exchange and access to all. Adobe recognizes that the extended web, reaching from devices to desktops needs to be equally open and as such is removing barriers that will enable content creation, applications and access to spread widely.

Posted by Dave McAllister at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SWF,AMF,Flash (R) Player(TM),Adobe

Today, May 1st, Adobe and a number of industry leaders is kicking off the Open Screen Project.

"So what is this Opens Screen Project of which you speak", whispers the web?

Well, let's set some context.

There's a challenge today across the industry that affects just about everyone. On desktops, there's a consistent runtime for content and rich applications, called the Flash Player (and increasingly for applications, Adobe AIR). But the web is not just desktops anymore, the extended web spreads from phones to MIDs to Settops, consumer electronics, and desktops.

So, together with a pretty influencial group of industry leaders (see website for details), Adobe is kicking off the  Open Screen Project, designed to create a consistent runtime environment that removes barriers for delivery of content and applications to everything from mobile phones to desktops.

This project kicks off today, and while it will be a continual thing, Adobe is making some significant announcements as part of the project.

First, Adobe is removing all use restrictions on the SWF specification. While SWF (the binary file format for playback) formerly had a license agreement that limited use of the specification, it's now gone. And BTW, the same applies to FLV/F4V, the streaming format. This is effective immediately.

Second, we will be publishing the port layer APIs for the Adobe Flash Player.  Not immediately, but "watch this space".  As we, working with the partners on the project create the consistent runtime, that porting layer will be made openly available to enable others to embed the technology easier.

Third, we're going to publish the data protocol specifications that drive Flash Cast as well. Expect to see that roll out over the next few months.

Fourth, with the first release of the runtime from the Open Screen Project, Adobe will remove all Adobe licensing fees from the Flash Player for devices.  (Yes, note the "for devices", the Flash Player has always been free for desktops).

(And don't forget the AMF specification, which we published in Feb 2008 as part of the BlazeDS open source initiative. It fits in here as well.)

So what does this all mean?

Well, it breaks down this way.  The power of the web is in its reach, open exchange and access. Adobe recognizes that the extended web, reaching from devices to desktops needs to be equally open and as such is removing a barrier that will enable content creation, applciations and access to spread widely. Similar to what we have seen with other open specifications, we expect that innovation and capabilities will appear that we ourselves would never get around to, or maybe even think of.

To us, this is a pretty major step. It's been worked on for a while now, and it's barely started. Since it's just underway, if you'd like more information, email the project at the Open Screen Project.

Ryan Stewart has a great blog on the impact of this.  Check out his insights!

So, since I can't say it near as well as our CTO, Kevin Lynch, drop over here and let Kevin tell you why this is important.

And let me know what you think..

Posted by Dave McAllister at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A big day for Adobe.  Flex 3 SDK goes live. This is a big deal for us, since it fulfills the first part of our open source efforts, and completes the commitment from last year. Also ready for real world is BlazeDS. Oh yeah, a little free product called AIR went version 1 today. (Now AIR isn't open source, but it is free.)  And we're still looking for Linux alpha users; see Even Penguins can get a breath of fresh AIR.

(actually, there are a lot of our projects out there on the newly launched Adobe Open Source site.)

In short, open source is important to Adobe.

 A year ago (a bit more), when I joined Adobe for open source, I was personally frustrated in trying to find all the places we have open source activities. And yes, it's not perfect yet.  But one of O'Reilly's thoughts on development patterns in open source is the perpetual beta. Consider our open source work a perpetual beta; it's change, evolve, grow.

There was some interesting blogs on how little, how slow.

Well, let's look at it this way. A research paper pointed out the change in communication models over the years, from phone calls, to emails, to IM and Tweets. The interesting things was in the age dynamic. Kids tend to favor the 140 character message, adults favor the phone call.

Well, many of you probably are in the mix of email, IM, tweet, etc, You've learned the power of new behavior. Companies also need to learn new behavior.And we're trying to move a company by the easy way, explanation, rather than the hard way, explosion.

Anyway, I'm sitting here at the Adobe Engage event, and we demonstrated the AIR alpha on Linux (Ubuntu), with the same app directly across from Mac.  Small steps, but the fact that they are occurring are important.

So it's a journey. Please join in with us. We're recreating the experience and making it possible to show Adobe the interest and power of the open source world. But that depends on you as much as it does us.

Posted by Dave McAllister at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)