Adobe joins Linux Foundation, develops Air for Linux (LinuxWorld) [LWN.net]

LinuxWorld is reporting that Adobe has joined the Linux Foundation and released an alpha version of the Air framework for Linux. "Although the Linux Foundation hailed Adobe's arrival as 'a natural extension of its commitment to open standards and open source,' that commitment stops short of publishing source code for the Linux version of Air. Adobe's end-user license for the code explicitly forbids any attempt to 'reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the software.'"

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Adobe joins Linux Foundation, develops Air for Linux (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 16:19 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (7 responses)

Yawn, take your non-free binary blobs elsewhere Adobe.

Adobe joins Linux Foundation, develops Air for Linux (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 17:05 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (5 responses)

On the contrary, I think we should welcome a closed-source company making serious steps
towards FOSS. Open sourcing Flex and giving Tamarin to Mozilla were worthy acts. Also
releasing AIR for Linux, while not FOSS, is still better than nothing.

It's progress, when a major closed-source vendor budges even an inch towards FOSS. I'm not
saying we should sing Adobe's praises from the rooftops, but certainly we should encourage
further acts along the same lines.

FOSS don't need to repeat Troy's history

Posted Mar 31, 2008 17:26 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

On the contrary, we should regard AIR as trojan. As clever ploy to pervert free software. And no, I'm not RMS and I don't think any proprietary program is evil.

I don't care about what the artist is using: Photoshop or GIMP. I don't care if programmer is using Eclipse or Visual Studio. As long as I'm not forced to use proprietary programs I'm happy to use them and content with their usage by others.

But situation with AIR is very-very different. It's runtime. It's proprietary runtime. And that means: when/if someone targets AIR I'm forced to use proprietary piece of shit. The same story as with Flash or JVM, really.

And in this kind of situation availability of kind-of-working binary blog is very-very bad: a lot of people are becoming content. Then another GCJ/Gnash effort becomes much harder.

Title of this article should be read as "Adobe joins Linux Foundations. Promises gift horse soon. Citizens of Troy^W^W^WLinux users are celebrating."

FOSS don't need to repeat Troy's history

Posted Mar 31, 2008 18:01 UTC (Mon) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] (3 responses)

JVM in the past, surely. OpenJVM is at the stage where Fedora 9 is shipping with it and, as
far as I 
can tell, all Java applications I throw at it works (NetBeans, Azureus, ...)

FOSS don't need to repeat Troy's history

Posted Mar 31, 2008 20:00 UTC (Mon) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (1 responses)

The Java applet plugin is still proprietary, however. As is Java Web Start.

FOSS don't need to repeat Troy's history

Posted Apr 1, 2008 0:18 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

In Fedora, the missing pieces are somewhat covered by GCJ code. Refer

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Java

So this is still a good argument for insisting on FOSS.

JVM is ALMOST in the past

Posted Mar 31, 2008 22:00 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

OpenJVM still fails for some applications, but the fact is: huge number of people worked VERY hard to reach this stage. Do you really think Sun opened up Java just because they felt like it? They still are trying to hurt Hamony in regard to certification, for example. And even if problems with Java are in the past we should not forget the pain nor repeat it - if at all possible.

Adobe joins Linux Foundation, develops Air for Linux (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 19:51 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

I welcome this development, and hope that a linux version of the flash development environment
will be forthcoming.

So what's Air?

Posted Mar 31, 2008 17:53 UTC (Mon) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link] (2 responses)

Other than the stuff we breathe, what is Air and why would Linux users care about it anyway?
Especially with those kinds of restrictions on it?

So what's Air?

Posted Apr 1, 2008 4:05 UTC (Tue) by ofeeley (guest, #36105) [Link] (1 responses)

It allows people familiar with Javascript and HTML (and Adobe's Flex and 
Flash) to deploy on the desktop through using the proprietary "Air" 
runtime.

It'll be relevant to GNU/Linux users if developers start pumping out 
huge "fat clients" and we get stuck with sending megabytes of information 
back and forth to servers through some lamely coded fallback method.

So what's Air?

Posted Apr 2, 2008 0:16 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

> "fat clients" and we get stuck with sending megabytes of information 
> back and forth to servers through some lamely coded fallback method.

Ah, I thought that's what the X Window System was for.

;-)

Adobe joins Linux Foundation, develops Air for Linux (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 19:17 UTC (Mon) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link]

It is time again to start a new project to make a free software version of "Air"...

Oh, by the way, Adobe's Air is not really air if it is not as free as air.

Adobe joins Linux Foundation, develops Air for Linux (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 20:16 UTC (Mon) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] (4 responses)

Adobe are jerks. Too stained reputation to trust them.
Down with them, I would like to say.

Case by case basis, please

Posted Mar 31, 2008 22:03 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

PostScript also started as proprietary Adobe-centered format, but today it's supported by huge number of non-Adobe programs. Ditto PDF. So no, not everything Adobe develops is bad. But AIR certainly is: it's buch of proprietary stuff right in the middle of Desktop (if Adobe will have their way). Let's reject it.

Remember Dmitri Sklyarov

Posted Apr 1, 2008 12:24 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (2 responses)

Or if not look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov
This guy spend month in jails for nothing because Adobe filled a bogus
DMCA complaint.

Adobe reputation is way too stained to trust them. The Linux foundation
should never have accepted them.

Remember Dmitri Sklyarov

Posted Apr 1, 2008 17:58 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (1 responses)

As a participant in the Free Dmitry movement, I agree.

From the point of view of a corporate app developer, though, there's a huge amount of pressure
to get something working NOW NOW NOW and pass the future  costs and freedom externalities onto
the next poor bastard.

A "Future-Proof Rich Internet Application Development" BOF at LinuxWorld in August might help
get the word out.  Anyone want to demo a sample app made on a less potentially troublesome
foundation?

Remember Dmitri Sklyarov

Posted Apr 2, 2008 0:19 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

Of course you know that if Air ever threatens to become too successful (and crossplatform),
Microsoft will do something to break it.  Cf Java.