Open at Adobe

You asked, we answered.

Today, Adobe is launching the alpha of 64b Flash Player for Linux. That's right, 64b, Flash Player, and Linux in the same sentence, without someone adding "Where is it?".

Not Windows, not Mac.  Linux.

So it's up to you.  Is this really important to you? Download it. Give us feedback.  File real bugs. If it's important, we'll see you using it, loading it. If it sits there without activity, you'll set back progress.

And if you want to see this on other products, Please get involved in the Tamarin project at Mozilla Foundation to port the VM to 64b of your choice.

You might also want to see the FAQ .

Anyway, this was one of the popuar questions submitted for the Adobe MAX panel on 11/19, with Adobe execs and invited guests. Guess I can strike it off the list.

Posted by Dave McAllister at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As was point out on A WebMaster's view of Eclipse.org, Adobe submitted full translations for Eclipse 3.4 in 6 languages. Languages include  German, French, Japanese, Korean, and both simplified and traditional  Chinese.

I've been told that each one consists of greater than 178K words.

Wow.

Posted by Dave McAllister at 01:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

            Coming up for the Adobe MAX conference, I'm hosting two talks and one Birds of a Feather on open source.

The talks are:

Mixing Open Source and Commercial Software
BlazeDS, the Adobe Flex SDK, and Tamarin reflect the continued extension of Adobe technology into open source. Understanding how to incorporate open source code with commercial software is becoming increasingly important. Learn about open source initiatives within Adobe and how they may affect organizations like yours.

Why Open Source, and What Makes the Cut?
Adopting open source technology and releasing technology as open source are important strategic decisions for any company. Learn why your company may benefit from these steps and when they make sense. Hear a panel discussion on Adobe's strategic vision for open source, learn what it means for your organization, and take the opportunity to ask questions and offer recommendations.

The last one is probably the most interesting. Joining me for a Q&A panel are Dave Story (Adobe VP, Product Development), Matt Asay (VP & GM, Alfresco), David Wadhwani (VP and GM , Adobe Platform Business).  (I still need to check if the intrpid Ryan Stewart is still joining us.)

Now, like any good panel, the content is driven by the questions. And I'm sure you all have questions.

So, if you have questions that you'd like to put into the list for this panel (a section of which will be "Questions from the 'Net"), then leave them in comments. I won't promise we get to all of them., I won't agree to ask insulting or trivial questions. I will make sure that a valid and reasonable representation of your questions get asked, ad I'll post answers here after the event.

So, give it your best shot, and make them good questions.

Posted by Dave McAllister at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Recently, Kevin Lynch (Adobe CTO), did a interview with eWeek which discussed open source.

A related discussion on Ostatic.com is very insightful and hits the high points.

But an issue comes up in a comment on the Ostatic article.

by Richard on Sep. 26, 2008

Why not ask Adobe if they are going to remove the restriction (in their Flash PLayer license) that anyone who has ever installed the Flash Player cannot work on development of open source alternatives such as Gnash. This is the biggest single change they could make to be more open source friendly.

Okay, we give up. What the heck is being discussed here? I can't find anything in the license that says "Using the product prevents you from working on an open source project". Nor can my legal types, internal and external to the company. Nor can other open source types that I've asked.

The agreement does state you won't reverse engineer the code. Okay, maybe that is confusing the issue. However, the statement is actually pretty clear: You can't modify, adapt, translate, or create derivative works based on Adobe software. You can't reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or do other things to discover the Flash Player source code.

But this doesn't mean you can't go work on an project like Gnash, it just puts a limit on what you can do with our software.

Or could you be referring to the old SWF license that blocked using the SWF specification for the purposes of building a SWF player? You know, we removed that restriction in May 2008. the SWF specification (and FLV/F4V, AMF, FlashCast) are all now published for use without restrictions. No restrictions. ( but keep in mind that there are copyright and trademark issues that continue in place).

So, unless someone can point me to a specific clause in the Flash Player EULA, I think it safe to close this issue.

Posted by Dave McAllister at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)