So these people have never heard of gnash?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jdixon Aug 02, 2017 7:29 PM EDT |
There is an open source flash implementation. https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ |
| dotmatrix Aug 03, 2017 8:39 AM EDT |
gnash never worked very well for me, especially for complex web applications that some employers thought were simply awesome because of the unnecessarily elaborate flash programming. It's difficult to create generic open source software from watching the behavior of closed source software. While the file SWF format is defined in an easily available specification, the player is definitely closed source with opaque magic sauce that may or may not be included in any specification. wine has never worked all that well either whenever I've tried it to test out some Windows software some friend said I should try. |
| jdixon Aug 03, 2017 10:41 AM EDT |
> gnash never worked very well for me, Yeah, it left a lot to be desired, but we're more likely to get Adobe to assist with it than to release their own code. |
| penguinist Aug 03, 2017 12:49 PM EDT |
Adobe could create some good will at this point if they were to release their flash code under an open source license. They don't have much to lose compared to just shutting it down and throwing it away. And think of all the support costs they would avoid. Having said that, I'm still of the opinion that it would be best for everyone if flash were left to die gracefully. |
| dotmatrix Aug 03, 2017 1:02 PM EDT |
penguinist wrote:Having said that, I'm still of the opinion that it would be best for everyone if flash were left to die gracefully. Definitely agree. |
| CFWhitman Aug 04, 2017 9:41 AM EDT |
Remember that a binary interface that is a moving target is always tougher to replicate. Microsoft has gone to much trouble and expense to make sure that the Windows binary interface is a moving target and can not be easily replicated by Wine or any other compatibility layer or Windows substitute. The other versions of DOS got too good and Microsoft faced competition. One of their chief goals is to prevent that from happening again. In the same way, Flash has kept changing over the years. If it stops changing, then there is a better chance that it will be reproduced adequately over a period of time. Of course, that doesn't mean that some kind of specification would be a bad thing. The only downside to opening the code up is that, if it's really low quality code (which I suspect it has at least become over the years), people might still be tempted to use it rather than throwing it out and reimplementing the specification from scratch. If you used access to the code to make gnash great, that would be nice. If you used it to lazily implement as a poorly maintained continuance of the current version of Flash, that might not be so nice. |
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