What almost everyone fails to realize is that Flash is already as open as it possibly can be. The SWF file specification and the player virtual machine are open and completely described here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/
The only thing that keeps Adobe from completely open-sourcing their own player is codec licenses, not Adobe's stubbornness. Adobe pays a lot of money to license codecs that are closed (like h.264) and therefore have to protect those interests within their player. If there were a common open standard for video/audio, this would be a possibility.
Flash isn't an open standard by any useful definition.
Sure they specified the container format, bytecodes, and data structures — but everybody had figured that part out a long time ago because it's obvious and easy to capitalize on by developing an extractor. The runtime APIs are incredibly hard to reverse-engineer, comprise the vast bulk of the Flash implementation, and are the entire reason for the plugin's instability.
It's like saying that Windows is a completely open platform (save for the patents) just because Microsoft publishes a stable userland ABI and fairly comprehensive API documentation for downstream developers.
The codec excuse is kind of bogus. Chromium itself comes with a separate package that contain patented codecs. Adobe could easily break down the code into separate parts, the whole open source part and a small codec package containing the patented parts. Of course it should also offer one full package for general use like Google does with Chrome Vs Chromium+ffmpeg-nonfree-codecs.
Define easily. We have no idea what the Adobe Flash codebase looks like, but given its age and complexity, it's probably pretty hairy. And it was never designed to be open sourced, so there probably weren't any efforts made to keep proprietary and non-proprietary code separate. Going back through and doing the necessary surgery is probably possible but not easy.
exactly, why not leave H.264/nellymose/whatever module as a stub in the code, then open source the rest. I am pretty sure a third party custom build can come up with using alternative technologies.
But I doubt they are willing to open source their pixel blender in Flash 10 though.
This framework was developed by my friend's brother, and was released this evening. He's been working on it for over a year and quit his job to focus on it. I think he is the single developer on the project - looks like quite an undertaking! I've not tried it out myself as he's kept it pretty close, but I'm glad to see it's now available.
This is an old article. I also removed AVG after seeing this ridiculous behavior, but after updating it on a different machine I realized they had seen the error of their ways and fixed this issue. They have since removed the error sign when the link checker is disable, and as far as I can see remember they now allow (at least custom) installation w/out the link follower at all (as my installation doesn't even have it!).
I do notice issues when AVG does it's weekly scan - the computer runs quite a bit slower - but besides that I've got no problems. I was upset when they released the version with the noted problems, but since they quickly released an update with fixes I'm happy enough to continue to use AVG. Everybody makes mistakes!
Not in my install, at least. I will admit the scanning is more obtrusive than I would like, but besides that there are no irregularities like that that make it an annoyance.
Yes, did that for me until I disabled it (after swearing at both AVG and Yahoo for the intrusion). Would have been a deal breaker - I like my blank tabs, they represent the limitless possibility of the internet.
Thanks for the clarification. I tried AVG some months ago, and I did notice the link checker. I found the idea useful, but it wasn't for me, so I disabled it. I didn't notice a change in the tray icon, so I guess I was using a fixed version.
It IS old. I am really surprised I got this link. Sorry you can't comment on it on this site. The original post actually came from my Blogger blog. Thanks :)
If you use iTunes, check out Genius. I only tried for the first time yesterday, but was amazed at the degree of interesting new music that matched my tastes.
The only thing that keeps Adobe from completely open-sourcing their own player is codec licenses, not Adobe's stubbornness. Adobe pays a lot of money to license codecs that are closed (like h.264) and therefore have to protect those interests within their player. If there were a common open standard for video/audio, this would be a possibility.
(edit) http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail...