jeudi 26 avril 2007
An analysis of Adobe's decision to open source the Flex SDK - Part 1 - Creating flash content for free
Par Aggelos, jeudi 26 avril 2007 à 15:12 - General
It's the great event of the day for our community. Adobe decided to open source the Flex SDK. Great.
Technically speaking, the SDK is (as is mtasc) a set of tools to create, from a set of assets (for example your source MXML or AS3 code) a group of binary objects in a still closed format (swf).
Yes, it is important to remember that, for now, the SWF format is still (as far as I know) a proprietary format ! We will come back on that later.
Let's have a little flashback on the open sourcing of flash. Until Flash MX 2004, the tools used to create flash applets were all closed source and all proprietary. Then came Nicolas CANASSE and Mtasc. For the first time, we had a free and open source way to compile assets in the latest up to date swf binary format. The stance of Macromedia at that time was to encourage the initiative, and it was already a great progress. And MTasc was open source, which means that not only was it free to use, but you also had with it the ability to audit the source code to check where it could fail, and also play with it to create new powerful functionalities from it (see HamTasc).
Then came Flex and AS3. Since it was born, the Flex framework was free to use. Although it was already a really appreciable move from Adobe it had its side effects. For example, Nicolas CANASSE would not create an AS3 compatible MTasc since he did not see why he would create an alternative for a framework that was free to use. And thus we lost all the power we had with MTasc. We could not play at the source anymore.
Now that power is back, and it may be for the best... And yet not.
Because swf is still a binary proprietary format. It is not by any mean an open standard ! One could object swf is a de facto standard through its extensive usage over the web... But just as much as JPEG or GIF are !
Now, the great move would have been to open the swf specification, but such is not the case.
Let's think outside of any context for now. No I really mean it. Please just put aside the fact that PDF is now an ISO standard and also put aside every former moves by either Adobe or Microsoft. It will be time to think about it again in the next part of this analysis.
- We have free and open source tools to develop flash source assets (FlashDevelop, Scite, ASDT etc)
- We now have free and open source tools to convert these source assets in swf binary format
- We have a free widespread plugin for internet browsers that can interpret this binary format
- And... for now (mark my words) these binary format are free to use, free to deliver...
Yet if you think about it, this format we love or hate is now more at risk than ever. Let us admit that using this free and open source framework creates a wonderful momentum around the technology, and that tomorrow more and more web applications (and/or sites) are developped using flash foundation technologies. And that at a given point Adobe decides to have you pay a license to deploy a swf binary. What will you do ? You will pay off course or you will fear the lawsuits.
This first part of the analysis was there to underline the key concepts of what is free and/or open source in the swf chain. The next parts will deal about :
- Part 2 : The Mozilla license and Ecma - Flex SDK and Tamarin
- Part 3 : Adobe and open source - Analysis of the strategy


