I'd say Gnash is much safer [LWN.net]

I'd say Gnash is much safer

Posted Aug 6, 2008 1:10 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: I'd say Gnash is much safer by coriordan
Parent article: Miguel de Icaza: "We could refresh the look and feel of the entire desktop with Moonlight" (derStandard.at)

A few points:

1. Reverse engineering is perfectly legal.

2. The problems are not with Adobe or Microsoft. It's with the codecs used in the media.

3. Moonlight was made with Microsoft's full knowledge.

4. Microsoft isn't evil and Adobe isn't on your side.

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I'd say Gnash is much safer

Posted Aug 6, 2008 10:36 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

1. Unfortunately, the legality of reverse engineering is far from perfect.  It's perfect
enough for small scale civil disobedience, but not for making technologies that really compete
with unfriendly megacorporations.  This was looked into when FSFE was representing Samba in
the EU anti-trust case.  That's why Samba's activities are limited to "protocol analysis".
They don't do "reverse engineering".

2. It becomes a Micrsoft problem when they change the focus of development and don't allow
Moonlight to follow (or when the start working on an extension or layer above Moonlight).
People developing for Moonlight are unlikely to agree to pin themselves to the old version.
Then the Moonlight developers will be in a similar situation to the Gnash developers BUT their
development team will all be "tainted" with MS knowledge and they'll have to try to build a
new development team from scratch.

3. Yes, and if anyone knows how to set a trap, it's MS.

4. You're right that Adobe isn't on free software's side.

clarifications

Posted Aug 6, 2008 14:34 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

In point #2, rather than "people working for Moonlight", I should have said "developers
targetting SilverLight".

I'd say Gnash is much safer

Posted Aug 7, 2008 18:42 UTC (Thu) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]

Given that they're a. not reverse engineering, or b. accessing Microsoft source code, in what
possible way is the Moonlight team "tainted" with MS knowledge?

I'd say Gnash is much safer

Posted Aug 11, 2008 21:31 UTC (Mon) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

And in fact I can confirm we (the development team inside Novell) are not tainted in any way.

Cheers, Massi