| |||||||||||||
Adobe EULA - our responsibility for promoting open standardsAdobe EULA - our responsibility for promoting open standardsPosted Apr 12, 2007 17:24 UTC (Thu) by endecotp (guest, #36428)In reply to: Adobe EULA by kevinbsmith Parent article: Two approaches to Flash
Yes. It's pretty clear that Adobe don't want people developing alternative Flash implementations; apparently they have been given the opportunity to give the "all clear" to these projects but have not done so.
We all need to question how it came to be that closed proprietary formats like Flash and WMV have come to the prominence that they have. I think that the basic answer is that these formats are better than the open alternatives, and that this superiority (*) has trumped the openness issue. This reflects badly on the people who have developed the inferior formats, and just as much on the rest of us who have not done our bit to help invent, implement and refine these formats more efficiently than people like Adobe and Microsoft.
I fear that in cases like Flash, we're doomed. Even if we were to invent a superior open alternative to Flash, existing mindshare would prevent it from becoming widely adopted. But we don't need to get it wrong next time, with the next technological wave - whatever that turns out to be.
I would like to encourage developers like Rob and Benjamin to carefully consider what they work on next. Please, find some new and growing area that interests you and develop an _open_ standard.
(*) superior in terms of functionality, ease of use, quality of implementation, documentation, having a sexy name and cool logo, being well marketed etc. etc.
(Log in to post comments)
|
|||||||||||||