Open at Adobe

I would not take the count of 27 at MAX too personally, or too seriously, as a sign that no one cares. Far from it. In fact, the way I see it, is that most developers did not go to that session because you guys have done such a good job in that regard. I was there, and that is the reason I didn't go: because I know that by talking to engineers and evangelists mono-a-mono at the BOF sessions, the JIRA, on FlexCoders, and other conferences, that our voices are being heard, and that Adobe listens. In fact, in my view, Adobe is one of the few companies that does get it, and I only recently learned there is a term for this. If you have any doubt that Adobe is making an impact, well, it is for me, so you may want to read this, and pass it around at Adobe: http://www.joeflash.ca/blog/2009/01/entering-into-the-conversation.html (skip 2/3 way down if you want to get to the punchline.)

I think it's fantastic that Adobe is doing this. I know I'll be there. Do not, ever ever think that we do not appreciate Adobe's openness, even if many of us have our heads buried too far into a project to respond as your efforts deserve.

Part of the problem with lack of community participation in Flex framework, its development and bug fixing, is that it's an incredibly complex piece of software. I feel I know Flex fairly well, and I barely have time in between writing and client work to submit bugs, let alone work on helping evolve the framework itself. But I might find the time, if I felt I knew what I was doing.

Right now advanced Flex workshops and tuts are all focused around building advanced functionality with the framework, or doing advanced connectivity with data sources. I would like to see more workshop sessions at conferences or video tuts on the innards of how the Flex framework works, and how to tweak and modify the framework itself, by the engineers themselves. Which means more information about undocumented metadata and other internal processes that for the most part can only be derived by guesswork or reverse-engineering. If these were to happen I might feel I understand the framework enough to make a worthy contribution, and I know a lot of my colleagues feel the same way.

This is me:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b790da

I agree with Joeflash on this:

"...Part of the problem with lack of community participation in Flex framework, its development and bug fixing, is that it's an incredibly complex piece of software. I feel I know Flex fairly well, and I barely have time in between writing and client work to submit bugs, let alone work on helping evolve the framework itself. But I might find the time, if I felt I knew what I was doing."

My 'rant' came about from the frustration I had while wondering around the Flex Open Source site looking for something that I could contribute on. I'd to see something like:

"We're are looking to improve [some aspect of Flex], here are the classes/scripts. It has to at least do these things [some things] as to not break these [some other components]."

or

"People in the community would have voiced a desire to add [ some new feature/component ]. Submit your suggestions or code here, and here is what others have said/done."

The idea being that the flex team can set up a sub-project with minimal effort and someone could get into with minimal effort ( not necessarily complete with minimal effort :P )

Two thoughts:

-The bulk of the 'Open' community doesn't feel Flex/Flash is truly open and therefore probably not attending your conference.
-Making a truly open platform is about more than individuals - its about creating platform that other large companies are willing to contribute to and support.

So I would caution polling your existing customers (either at your conference or the online meeting) and taking that as proof that theres nothing to gain by opening the Flash platform. Those folks are already convinced they should be using Flex/Flash. Going open is about _expanding_ the Flash platform to the others who aren't willing to use it today.

I wouldn't be bothered about low numbers at MAX.
MAX is stupidly expensive (even though it's now outside the US), so do you tend to get lots of manager types there, I guess, who are unlikely to want to come and help out with a FOSS project ?
And, as others say, lots of us are involved, engaged and (trying to !) work on open source with Adobe. There are just a few wrinkles to sort out, and I look forward to talking about them tommorrow.

I agree with Joeflash, and Alan. I think the in order to stimulate more participation in the community, the Flex team should consider offering a vision as to where the team would like to go and encourage coders to contribute to the vision. Once the vision has been established in the mind of the community, I guarantee that more people will contribute. I don't think it's a matter of not caring as much as it is a matter of giving direction more clearly. When people know the direction and are given some distinct guidelines you can effectively channel community resources into a more purposeful circuit. Perhaps you could also offer some more competitions, swag, etc., to achieve this purpose....

Business moves fast. Too fast. Life needs time to catch up.

I didn't know about the teleconference till now... too late.
I don't have the time or money to make the MAX conferences or 360|Flex... but let me explain:
I'm new to RIA and Flash and Flex. I tried the trial FlexBuilder and really liked it. That was about mid last year.
I bought the standard version and received a 30 day intro to Lynda's learning web site.
After the 30 days, I bought into the one year subscription with media. I also decided to make the largest software purchase of my life.
On release of CS4 I bought the production suite. I did qualify for the product upgrade since I had one Adobe product, but believe me this was a very big purchase for me.
Since discovering Flex, I have purchased ... eight (or so) books on flash/flex/illustrator/aftereffects/photoshop. I'm trying to learn, have a lot to learn and really feel good about Adobe's technology and approach to open source. So I am not one counted at the conferences because I wasn't there. And thank all those who made much material avialable via adobeTV. And I missed this meeting. And if I was there I might of only listening... cause I am only learning... So this message is to Management... Open Source Matters. I voted with my own dollars. thank you Adobe and Community.

We do care - we love the idea and the promise it has - but at the same time the people I know (myself included) are migrating Flash developers with no serious experience using the systems and have never contributed to an open-source project before. It's baby-steps even knowing what a lot of the stuff is all about, so we don't know how. Yet.

Plus, we couldn't wrangle tickets for MAX out of the the company conferences budget ;)

Hopefully you've been able to take part in the recent virtual meetings, and the recent Open Iteration meeting. also please chime in on the Flex forums. Your voices are heard, and the more we hear that is a balanced view, the easier it is to make positive things happen.

Adobe needs to organize a new open source initiative or the community will. The Flex framework needs continued support because of the large dependency in the industry. But isn't the plan to build a future version of Flex from scratch, mobile as a target platform first and expanding to a full replacement of the Flex we love and hate now? Is this new Flex also going to be designed, architected and developed before involving the community?

The next version of Flex needs to be organized and managed by Adobe, but as a community driven (and contributed) project from the ground up. This includes API, architecture and class implementation. It can be developed simultaneously to the current Adobe-owned Flex and would require minimal Adobe resources - a single OS manager. Then let the community drive its feature set, structure and direction. There are a lot of intelligent and talented developers & architects out there and Adobe can't afford to employ them all, but Adobe can afford to organize their efforts in a large-scale open source initiative.

Too Utopian maybe? Just an idea - it will happen one way or another. Might as well have a hand in it from the beginning.

Hopefully you've been able to take part in the recent virtual meetings, and the recent Open Iteration meeting. also please chime in on the Flex forums. Your voices are heard, and the more we hear that is a balanced view, the easier it is to make positive things happen. And hopefully, the changes wehave started will help with your concerns.

I agree with the bulk of the comments here. Don't take the numbers personally. I was at MAX North America and there were way too many sessions competing for an audience. I definitely appreciate all of the open source efforts coming from Adobe, as do most of the people that I work with and run into.