Am I the only one in the Flash community scared to death by Gnash? I haven’t been following the OSFlash mailing list in a long time, so haven’t been privy to the public discussions to see the community’s overall stance over time. I’ve only got a snapshot of context.
MTASC did it right. If your code works in the MTASC compiler, it’ll work in the Flash compiler. I currently do not see how Gnash could accomplish the same thing. I have a sinking feeling the fragmentation of the differing feature set will form some instances where a project depends on said features, and thus the code base only works in Gnash. Seriously, who is going to hold the Gnash developers accountable when something works in the Flash Player and not in Gnash? Will they care? Perhaps they instead should market it not as a “Flash Player Player”, but rather an open source Rich Internet Application engine? haXe is pretty successful at this.
If the above becomes a reality, hopefully I’ll get a poison dart frog shot in my neck from Zagar. Fragmentation is cool in Quake rockets, not Flash Players.
Couldn’t agree more Jesse!
‘Am I the only one in the Flash community scared to death by Gnash?’
One remedy may be to track the main mailing list:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash/
Even if they can actually create a rendering engine, deployment seems like it would be limited to those who prefer the brand of Richard Stallman.
What I’m more concerned about is those who might choose to reduce predictable global clientside capability, in favor of their own approaches, by funding and distributing such a varietal engine. It’s the global deployment of any renderer which is the difficult part, and there are brands out there which do enjoy consumer trust similar to that of Adobe. (I’ve seen no indications that any manufacturer, OS, browser, portal or media center might do so, but any such announcement seems like it could cause more damage than the Gnash project alone does.)
Not scared to death, but concerned.
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=822
isn’t this illegal or something? It should be ;-)
Come on guys,
You cannot really mean that this scares you? Gnash fits well in here. It’s an open source SWF player that targets platforms that Macromedia and now Adobe long ignored. It will be used by the geeks, not the masses and that will not cause any confusion at all. It will rather bring Flash to even more OS’s.
The upcoming Linux player is long overdue so MM / Adobe sort of made this to happen themselves. The upcoming official player will hardly work for every NIX distribution either, so Gnash has a right to exist as support for these ‘excluded’ platforms. I’m actually impressed by these guys and the ones that made the Open Source PSP Flash Player as well. It’s a massive effort, but let’s be honest – Gnash won’t get ‘mass distribution’. Those who will use Gnash will also be aware that they are using an Open Source solution and not the official Player. They are probably used to that all features will not work. They never did so in the official Flash Player 7 from Macromedia either, so what will the difference be?
Come on guys,
You cannot really mean that this scares you? Gnash fits well in here. It’s an open source SWF player that targets platforms that Macromedia and now Adobe long ignored. It will be used by the geeks, not the masses and that will not cause any confusion at all. It will rather bring Flash to even more OS’s.
The upcoming Linux player is long overdue so MM / Adobe sort of made this to happen themselves. The upcoming official player will hardly work for every NIX distribution either, so Gnash has a right to exist as support for these ‘excluded’ platforms. I’m actually impressed by these guys and the ones that made the Open Source PSP Flash Player as well. It’s a massive effort, but let’s be honest – Gnash won’t get ‘mass distribution’. Those who will use Gnash will also be aware that they are using an Open Source solution and not the official Player. They are probably used to that all features will not work. They never did so in the official Flash Player 7 from Macromedia either, so what will the difference be?
When I first heard of gnash I was a little worried. Then I realized it was a linux only player, and was flash 7. Now I’m more puzzled than anything. By the time gnash reaches any sort of useable stage, the official player 9 for linux will have been released, and player 10 will be into production. Sounds like it would be a fun project to be a part of, but not particularly useful.
For now it’s targeting Linux, but that could change. Still – it is there to solve a problem, not to cause them. As far as I can remember, Adobe is only targeting the big NIX distributions. Those on a non-supported platform can probably compile a version of Gnash for their platform?
‘…that targets platforms that Macromedia and now Adobe long ignored…’
I know that this has been asserted and re-asserted on Digg recently, but a look at history provides a more accurate picture:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates
There are three important differences this cycle:
(1) More people are using Linux in 2006, and they’re able to communally publish more easily now.
(2) The rapid jump between Flash Player 8 to 9, and the decision to update Linux to the latest version, increased the usual lag time between major and minor platforms.
(3) The rapid adoption of SWF8 by popular content sites, particularly the video sites, has increased the pain factor for Linux users.
jd
JD, what I meant is that Adobe will hardly target all Linux distributions (http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/08/across_the_distros.html) and that Gnash can be a solution for those on one of those not covered, can’t it?
I work with several Linux users on a big project and several features does not work in the current Flash Player 7 that they use. Transparency and rendering of device fonts are two things that fail. These users really hoped for a bugfix through Flash Player 8 for Linux, but that never came. I know that the next version will be sort of a replacement, but it’s been a long time for them with only a buggy version 7 to use.
Ok, YAFP (Yet ANnother Flash Player). I have to agree with most of the comments. SO What? Big Deal….. Adobe has been SSSLLLLLOOOOWWW to get more pfFlash players out on different platforms so this is bound to happen. Frnakly, they should make the SDK more easily available and let people pay for certification of their player. We NEED Flash on Linux. Linux is being used in toys (see Leap Frog), Set Tops and other consumer devices that would benefit from a Flash player. Sometime Adobe contradicts itself, they want the player everywhere but make developers and OEMs go through pretty expensive hoops to get there.
An oh, BTW, the SDK is always at least 1 generation behind the released player! What’s with that!?! They are not even eating their own dog food. So to speak……..
The topic of flash on linux entertains me, if ever I miss some slashdot patheticness I pop over and have a read on penguin.swf. For a ‘community’ there’s more bickering and bitching than an episode of footballers wives.
Linux devs seem to think Adobe have missed the boat on Flash player deployment, Adobe seem to think they haven’t and the numbers game works in favour of SLL (Support Linux Later). I put confidence in the fact that the Adobe business heads are clued up enough to budget time, resources and dates for the best time to release the player over the extremist ‘I use Linux to decide what to wear’ crowd in terms of business sense.
As far as Gnash goes, even if it does pick up pace, it’ll be dropped by most when Adobe launch the official player until (if and) when Gnash supports all flash player features or there is another delay in the next version. It’s a good initiative and its a shame flash player takes so long to get to Linux but I’m sure as long as the Linux numbers keep going up so will the Linux Flash Player efforts.
(BTW, I use Windows and Linux machines on a daily basis and am considering a Mac for my next notebook, I hate none and enjoy using all)
Sorry I’m a little late in this conversation. By odd coincidence, I had dinner with the lead developer of Gnash just a couple days after Jesse posted.
A few insights that might be useful:
The thing is that gnash and SWFdec have come about as a result of adobes inaction during the development of flash 8 and 9, especially flash 8.
gnash is a blessing to some folk, especially AMD users, as there is no 64bit support for flash…