Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 14, 2012 11:40 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
Parent article: The Shumway open SWF runtime project

They always refused to give financial help to Gnash and other free SWF players on the grounds that they don't want to support closed formats.

That's what they're doing now, right? What changed?

Might they now consider giving Gnash a little help?

Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 14, 2012 14:13 UTC (Wed) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link] (7 responses)

"They always refused to give financial help to Gnash and other free SWF players on the grounds that they don't want to support closed formats."

I don't remember that ever being our position; do you have evidentiary support?

Either way, now we've started our own Flash reimplementation project, it would be rather an odd time to start funding someone else's...

Gerv

Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 14, 2012 15:18 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (6 responses)

My memory is fairly clear on that, but I don't have a link and sticking the keywords into search engines yields mountains of tech discussions about gnash working in Mozilla firefox.

If I'm wrong (which is possible), then what did stop Moz Foundation from helping the struggling SWF projects? Did they want to help, but got no requests and didn't see the funding pleas? Or did the idea of SWF support simply never come up?

(I'm not demonising the Moz Foundation, but if no one can provide a link to evidence, then we have to look at who's version fits the context.)

Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 14, 2012 16:40 UTC (Wed) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link] (5 responses)

I've done a bit of internal searching, and found a quote from Chris Blizzard which is used here:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/why-mozilla-does-no...

That quote focusses more on the lack of an open process than the lack of an open format, but let's not split hairs. Your original post was mostly right. I'd not read the above before.

I never saw a formal funding proposal from Gnash, though.

I do remember some discussions in the last couple of years about us bundling Flash like Chrome does. That has the obvious "it's not open source" issues. Gnash got mentioned in that context; I think people were concerned that the Gnash implementation wasn't complete enough and it would just end up being a massive bug and time sink if we made it the default in Firefox for the whole world. I guess "fund it" would have been a follow-on possibility from that line of argument but I didn't see it raised.

We've taken a lot of pain from Flash in one way or another (hangs, crashes, security issues). The Flash problem has no good, simple solutions. :-|

Gerv

Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 15, 2012 0:49 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (1 responses)

I think the situation has changed in the last two years. It's now clear that Flash is dying. We don't have to worry about Flash being a competitor to the open Web anymore; the problem now is how to minimize the damage to the open Web, to users and to Mozilla during Flash's demise. Shumway, by mapping SWFs to the open Web platform, does not help Flash compete with the open Web; it helps platforms that support the open Web but not Flash compete for users, and protects users from some of the problems Flash causes.

Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 15, 2012 10:41 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

> It's now clear that Flash is dying.

It's declining, but change is slow (and time makes a return possible).

For some things, such as children's 2D games and TV channel websites, Flash seems still as dominant as ever. I simply ignore those sites, but my friends don't.

Flash is less necessary now than it was in 2005 (when Gnash began), but it would still be very good to have a free software Flash player.

Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 15, 2012 10:51 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (2 responses)

Thanks for the link. That's what I was referring to alright.

Since Moz Foundation has now decided to put resources into an SWF player, one way to find good people to work on the project would be to contact the projects that previously spent years doing exactly that.

Just an idea.

Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 15, 2012 11:57 UTC (Thu) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link] (1 responses)

I recommended internally to the Shumway people that they get in touch with Rob Savoye. Perhaps reasonably, HR won't tell me how that conversation went, but he's not currently working for us.

Gerv

Since when does Moz Foundation support SWF?

Posted Nov 15, 2012 14:09 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Ok. Well, I wish Shumway great success!