Open source Flex is great
As I found about the news, I spent some time yesterday having a look at the project's files. It's always interesting to have a look at the internals of the software for curious-like-a-cat people like me… but honestly, I'd rather have the Flash player open sourced. That would help to fix, or at least to explain, those absurd issues one finds from time to time when working with Flash.
Even worse: each new version of Flash player introduces slightly different issues. Or bugs, if you prefer. For example, the latest one (9.0.115) has a funky way of playing sound files. If the sample is 44KHz, everything is fine. But if you had a one minute sample with a different rate (say, 22KHz), you can't simply say go to the second 30 and play, because it will instead go to the second 60 (and hence, finish playing!).
And yes, the issue tracker is now accessible to the general public and so you can directly report these odd behaviours directly to Adobe. See here, here and here for some flash.media.Sound errors already reported.
I'm sure if more people could have a look at the player source, these oddities would be fixed way earlier, or at least they wouldn't be released to the general public with a major bug like that one introduced so lightly.
It would also make easier to have updated versions of the Flash player in platforms which currently are always a step behind, because they need to wait for Adobe to release them, or do not have support at all, like Linux PowerPC (at least, it hadn't, last time I tried).
Unfortunately I have the feeling this won't happen any time soon. With DRM dangerously approaching the path of the player it would be quite surprising to have the source code so that everybody could find work-arounds to those restrictions if they feel like. And it would destroy Adobe's monopoly too, of course. Which I guess they prefer not to happen.
Zarate
20080228
Great news indeed.
However, i slightly disagree with: "[open sourcing the player] would destroy Adobe's monopoly too."
Open sourcing the JVM hasn't destroyed Sun's control over it. Might have brought some _side effects_ (like Android's Dalvik) but i think it's the way to go.
And with MS finalizing Silverlight 2.0 (PC/Mac, cross-browser, might even run on Linux via Mono) Adobe has to go a step forward. One of the biggest complains in the OS world is that the player is closed. Latest Debian release even explicitly asks for installing GNash instead.
We know the power of MS. They just need to push Silverlight in an IE updated and, bam!, 95% of computers in the world would get it sooner or later. Adobe has NOT that power. And for me the way to compete is opening the player and getting *massive* support from everyone else but MS.
Adobe, release the player. Better sooner than later!
: )
Cheers!
sole
20080228
I thought about that as well! But still I'm not 100% sure, I have that feeling… like if Adobe thought they had _that power_ and were waiting until the very last moment for desperately open sourcing the player.
You're very spot on Silverlight.