(I look at what you can achieve, the risks you run, the way you can influence the future, rather than just at whether a particular semantic label is slapped atop.)

jd

Thanks for the comments.

I sure do not dismiss it, just because it is proprietary. I am currently actively using flex, to build real applications, for real customers, today. And I like it! I even tell other people, that it is great

But this does not change the fact, that it IS closed and proprietary. If Adobe want it otherwise, open it. If they don’t, by all means, keep it closed. But admit it, and don’t fight, as if it was open, when it is not. It has been closed up until now, and it has great success (flash). But it DOES matter, if it is open or closed.

I have not said, that the flash player team has not been responsive. Not at all.

Ahrem! You link to http://web.archive.org/web/20000815054538/www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates/, which seems to show, that the player has NOT been officially (by Adobe) on the linux platform. And it has not. It IS now, and that is great. Maybe the player would even work out of the box in Konqueror and Safari, if it was open sourced And come jumping in with “apt-get install”, as a officially supported, free .deb distro package.

And you are right, that flash offers the most predictable platform (for RIAs), of today. That is why I use it.

But is IS closed and proprietary. Right?

I’d argue that the Flash Player team is more responsive than the browser vendors… even when considering CSS support alone, it’s hard to reach any other conclusion. The process may be different, but the results definitely seem more open to input.

Datapoints:

Applications made via Adobe Flex 2 run in any version of Adobe Flash Player 9, which is already installed by 95% of consumers tested:
http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

The upcoming Flex 3 runs atop Player 9 r30 or better, and persistent framework caching (for very fast startup times) requires the current “Moviestar” r115 or better.

“Bug resolution” is frequently contested, but the bottomline is that you cannot control what other people install anyway. Adobe Flash Player offers a much more predictable environment when running on other people’s machines. What other people install is up to them, not you. It’s a very different dynamic than Apache, or your own customized browser build. It runs on Other Peoples Machines. Treat it as a given.

Macromedia Flash Player has been on Linux nearly its entire history:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815054538/www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates/
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/01/win_mac_linux.cfm

jd/adobe

While I really do like projects like gnash, who are actively trying to provide us all with an open-source alternative, I still think it has a long way to go. At least with respect to flex. Flex2 apps require flash9 to run. Gnash “only” supports flash7, and is working on support for flash8.

Also, to me, flash and flex wouldn’t be such a great thing to do RIA apps in, if it wasn’t for the fact that their (Adobes) player is everywhere. Having the runtime out there, installed in browsers, accepted by company security rules, etc., is such a great advantage over competing technologies.

So, with respect to flex, gnash just wont cut it. Yet. With a lot of other flash content, it might.