Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Designers (internetnews.com) [LWN.net]

Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Designers (internetnews.com)

Posted Feb 16, 2007 0:31 UTC (Fri) by k8to (subscriber, #15413)
Parent article: Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Designers (internetnews.com)

"[...]we really just want it to work."

Oh really? Just not on amd64, or powerpc, or when the charset isn't UTF_8. And so on.

It's impressive to me how vastly more complex pieces of code were ported to Linux in far less time and managed to cover all arches. We all know the reasons behind this failure, but I think continuing to point it out is worth doing.

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Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Designers (internetnews.com)

Posted Feb 16, 2007 1:32 UTC (Fri) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link]

We all know the reasons behind this failure, ...

Please list the reasons that you claim we all know.

Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Designers (internetnews.com)

Posted Feb 16, 2007 1:53 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

My guess would be:
"It's propriatory software"

If it was open source/free software then every distribution would support it out of the box and it would more then likely support PowerPC, Sparc, Arm and whatever else people care to use it with.

Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Designers (internetnews.com)

Posted Feb 16, 2007 3:10 UTC (Fri) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Yes my list was basically proprietary, and then some stranglehold dreams and brain damage which lead to this being the case. The dream of owning the platform. Everyone wants to be Microsoft.

Sure, you can succeed by inventing the platform and making all the best tools for it, but that would cause your company to stay focused and keep quality up. It's much easier to claim openness while creating roadblocks. That way you can lose focus and drift from your moorings.