
Petition to open source Flash - pkstn
https://github.com/pakastin/open-source-flash
======
notacoward
No no no no NO. It's time to get rid of Flash. Open-sourcing will make it live
forever.

Flash has very little to offer that is not at this point duplicated (or
improved upon) by others. It's also woefully insecure. "Many eyes make all
bugs shallow" will only work for the most trivial bugs in the most common code
paths. Plenty of vulnerabilities will remain. In open source, they'll be even
easier for attackers to find and exploit. If you want something open-source
and (mostly) Flash compatible, follow nkkollaw's suggestion: support one of
the already-open-source alternatives.

~~~
captainmuon
Do you think Flash is insecure in principle, or in implementation? I think it
is very much a problem of the implementation. I don't know if Adobe/Macromedia
could have done better, or if the backwards compatibility requirements make it
impossible to maintain, but I'd like to see for myself.

Anyway, you have no reason to be afraid. All mayor browsers are dropping
support for plugins anyway. An open source flash player will most likely be
used standalone, and not in a browser.

(I can't help but wonder if we are making a huge historical mistake here by
the way. Because the Flash implementation was so bad, we were led to believe
that plugins are bad per se. But at least in theory, it seems to me that the
best architecture would be a minimal browser (just a layout engine), and
everything as a plugin. Current browser are horrible monolithic giants, that
only mega-corporations (and Mozilla ;-)) can maintain. That they are
relatively secure is only due to the massive amounts of human-years that went
into polishing and bug fixing in the recent decade.)

~~~
__s
The issue with a plugin architecture is that it makes it difficult to compete.
There essentially will come a pool of plugins which are expected to be
installed on every user's machine, & without standardization or open source
implementations you'll end up with 1 plugin being used on any base browser as
opposed to different versions on each browser

In theory we could create a basic browser with various HTML/JS/CSS spec
features created as a plugin

~~~
roenxi
Speaking as a clueless user; closed source plugins, sooner or later, go away.
Which is pretty painful. In the interim, the big grief-causers are usually
closed source plugins that crash the host.

Open source plugins cause a lot less grief. Typically they don't have a
feature I want. Often for legal reasons and not technical, or because a
proprietary vendor is fighting back (eg; video patents the first case, Skype
protocol the second).

The linux kernel is an example how an open-source-only plugin system works
technical wonders. A very interesting case study was graphics drivers circa
2005. The closed source drivers (essentially plugins) tethered the linux
community to the technically obsolete X server; and would have crippled the
kernel in a similar way if the kernel devs had accepted closed source plugins.

Apple did wonders driving open standards on the web with the explicit
acknowledgement that popular closed source plugins were too dangerous for
their platform to implement [1].

The issue here is the one Stallman has been harping on since the dawn of time
- closed source is unmaintainable in an extremely profound way.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-
flash/](https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/)

------
aylmao
I learned to program in ActionScript 2 on Macromedia Flash MX back in high-
school. In spite of all the (deserved) hate Flash gets, we got to give it
credit too.

\- It was a response to the stagnant IE-dominated web that allowed people to
experiment and create incredibly rich content that is still hard to replicate.

\- It's editor was amazing for introductory programming. It was as easy and
intuitive to use as any vector-graphics editor, but you could get really
complex on your programming too. It was very visual, very graphical, which
helped.

\- It was great for animation. I really can't think of anything that compares.
There's lots of animation software out there but most are targeted to video.
There's lots of libraries for animating Canvas/SVG, but they don't have
interfaces/editors for non-programmers. Flash was an amazing middle-ground; a
great creative AND technical tool IMO.

\- ActionScript was nice; it wasn't daunting, it had types to help you, but
they didn't clutter the syntax. If I recall correctly, the tooling wasn't too
shabby either, with good auto-complete and suggestions as you type.

It's thus no wonder it caught on like wildfire and there was so much content
for it. It was a good option for technical projects and creative ones,
beginners and experts. I definitely don't want to see Flash making a comeback
on web, but I wouldn't mind seeing it in standalone applications (assuming
security doesn't become an issue), and I could see its value on education,
granted, with the right editors and tools.

------
jarym
So much hate for Flash. Yes it has regular security holes, is CPU hungry and a
lot of people used it to create some mightily annoying things....

But Flash was a gift from the gods back in the early days of IE and most
people forget that. If you wanted to make some HTML look nice you had little
more than the dreaded 'blink' tag to work with.

If it weren't for Flash I doubt we'd have anywhere near as advanced CSS, SVG,
Canvas and HTML5 bells and whistles that designers can actually use now.

I doubt Adobe will open source it though. They probably know there's a whole
heap of other security issues in it that'll get found and exploited as soon as
they release it. Your average user won't be able to patch fast enough!

~~~
notacoward
As the currently-most-upvoted hater, I kind of agree. Flash _was_ fantastic
back in the day. I played many games and movies that way, and was thusly
enriched. But the Sega Genesis was also great in its day. So was the vinyl
record. Those days are gone. Flash has accrued negatives, which now outweigh
the positives.

~~~
xupybd
Sega has emulators, vinyl record players still exist.

Open sourcing flash doesn't mean it will stay mainstream, it probably
shouldn't. But there is valuable flash content. If they kill flash and don't
open source it, the only way to run flash will be on old browsers possible in
old operating systems. This will put a big burden on businesses requiring old
flash apps.

~~~
notacoward
Flash has emulators too. I think you just made my point.

~~~
xupybd
Actually if there is a good emulator, I'm happy.

------
nkkollaw
Why not contribute to well-established open source Flash players?

[http://lightspark.github.io/](http://lightspark.github.io/)

[https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/](https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/)

~~~
leeter
Or [https://github.com/mozilla/shumway](https://github.com/mozilla/shumway)
which doesn't require any native code

~~~
mgamache
Shumway is a dead project (hasn't been updated for a while). Too bad, because
it showed promise.

~~~
szatkus
Last time I tried it was working surprisingly well. Even if it's dead it can
be useful.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> Even if it's dead it can be useful.

An appropriate thing to say in a discussion about Flash :)

------
ransom1538
Again. From my game dev days, the people that really lose (over and over) are
the _artists_. Millions of hours have been sunk into laying out vector
graphics with the Flash IDE. Code I understand should eventually be tossed
away, but, not _art_. I guess staring at millions of beautiful vector
timelined illustrations changed my opinion - but it is art to me. And like
books, I think its a sin to toss. I hope the artists convert their .fla files
over and save what they can.

~~~
eric_h
That's not going away, though. Adobe Animate isn't being EOL'ed.

~~~
ransom1538
Hopefully! However, I doubt Adobe will continue flash IDE support - while
taking down the flash browser plugin. I expect an announcement soon.

------
simion314
I can't understand why people are against open sourcing some proprietary code,
why would it affect you? If you hate Flash that much you will have the
opportunity to see the source code and confirm that is bad. All the open
source reimplementation are incomplete, so with the opening up of Flash the
open source ones could have a look (if license allows) and finish the
reimplementation.

~~~
chickenfries
I can't believe what I'm seeing. People on HN don't want something to be open
sourced? Is it opposite day?

~~~
80211
Because it's Flash and their God Steve Jobs said that Flash was bad. It's
really as simple as that.

~~~
chickenfries
I want to believe that you're not right, but you might be. I just can't
understand why a massive proprietary codebase becoming open wouldn't be a Good
Thing

------
nradov
Chances are that Flash contains licensed third-party IP and thus Adobe
couldn't unilaterally open source it even if they wanted to.

~~~
larsiusprime
True, but even a non-functional source dump with lots of the guts ripped out
and redacted would be extremely useful for researchers and preservationists.

~~~
bdcravens
I suspect Adobe isn't interested in committing man hours to that process.

------
mstade
FWIW I posted[1] in the Flash EOL thread the other day that an Adobe employee
told me years ago that licensing issues were the main hindrance to open
sourcing the Flash player. (Another HN user who said they used to work for
Adobe seems to back this up.) A lot of technology in the player was licensed
and difficult to remove/refactor such that the player code could realistically
be opened up, and there was little business incentive to invest resources into
it. I'd imagine the incentives are even less now.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14850791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14850791)

~~~
winter_blue
I assume it's patents that comprise the licensed technology? Does Flash
contain _code_ that has been licensed from other companies? If it's just
patents, there's no problem in open-sourcing; on the other hand, I can see
licensed code being a problem. But with all of the open-source implementations
various codecs, gutting out the parts of Flash that contain the licensed code,
and open-sourcing would be a viable option indeed.

~~~
mstade
It's been years, so take this with a truckload of salt, but if I recall
correctly the issue was licensed _code_ , along with a mostly ad-hoc structure
of the player which meant extracting this would be difficult without a total
rewrite, which is hard enough as is to justify but probably even more so when
there's no clear business incentive for it. As well, a rewrite means
considerable risk to breaking old content, which Adobe (and before them
Macromedia) worked pretty hard _not_ to do. I can see why this wasn't very
palatable.

As I said though, it's been years and I'm just relaying what I can recall so I
may very well be getting things wrong.

------
fenomas
I worked at Adobe near the Flash team back in the day, and the PMs I knew
would have absolutely _loved_ to open-source the Player. The problem isn't
willingness, it's third-party code, of which there is apparently a lot.

If there was just a button to be pressed, Adobe would have pressed it circa
2010. But at this point, I think open-sourcing Flash Player is the kind of
thing where the project to figure out what all would need to be done would
cost more than Adobe would want to invest, never mind actually doing the
necessary work (both engineering and legal).

------
gamedna
Flash has generated a tremendous amount of assets that will be lost.
Preserving them for historical reasons is extremely important but i am far
less interested in preserving the technology than preserving the idea or
creation itself. I would love to see an effort around conversion or
transcoding flash assets to other technologies. For example, flash movies
being rendered to an open standard or flash games being automatically
converted to javascript/html5. The content creator deserve to have their
legacy recorded and maintained but this is not the solution. (granted it may
be a solution for other use cases, but i am not sure what those are)

~~~
simion314
To transcode all Flash content you need a similar amount of work as
reimplementing Flash since you need to transcode all the functions, it is
similar as Wine project is doing and it is always behind and there are bugs,
having the source will help implementingt the translation.

~~~
gamedna
Wine is an emulator, hence the name. (WINdows Emulator) By transcoding I am
referring to rendering the flash content in a completely new medium. For
example videos could be rendered using the existing closed source
implementation into an open source video codec/format. For the interactive
flash content, the content creators have the option of porting it to another
platform to preserve the idea. Adobe even provides a tool to assist with this
([https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/how-to/convert-flash-ads-
to-...](https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/how-to/convert-flash-ads-to-
html5.html)) Finally transcoding would recompile the framework into another
framework. Think of this as converting Flash/Actionscript into HTML5
Canvas/Javascript.

~~~
apt-gett
(W)ine (I)s (N)ot an (E)mulator

It's a compatibility layer.

~~~
gamedna
Thank you for the correction.

------
rnhmjoj
As long as it stays away from a browser it's perfectly fine.

I am already using gnash to run flash games and a feature complete open source
implementation would be very welcome.

------
Anatidae
There could be an issue of opening up even more security issues for people
with Flash still installed. That, in turn, will likely lead to an all out
campaign to remove Flash from everything possible (maybe not a bad thing at
this point).

But, honestly - Flash as a platform hasn't advanced much in quite a while.
What it once offered - rich multimedia runtime engine across platforms - is
either available in the browser directly or can be attained through even more
rich engines such as Unity3D.

~~~
aarongolliver
There _is_ an all out campaign to remove flash from everything possible. Soon
it will be gone from every major browser and phone. That's exactly what this
is in response to.

Personally I just want to ensure there's a way for me to go back and look at
all the work I did in high school. It's already a pain to figure out how to
run my old SWF files, and soon it's going to be nearly impossible.

Maybe I should just snapshot a VM with everything set up correctly?

~~~
simion314
If you use the VM solution you probably need some open VM format, in case in a
few years the current formats are dropped.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Just use a raw disk image? What format is there to lose?

~~~
simion314
VirtualBox uses an XML file that stores your VM settings, and for disks there
are a few options,for my work I use the disks that grow (so I set the disk to
100Gb but if I use 20 Gb now it will use 20Gb of my real disk space)

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
That's fair, but the XML is probably non-essential, and I believe there are
already open source converters for most disk image formats. There's some risk,
but I don't think it's very much.

------
JohnTHaller
No, you don't need your silly flash player to play free games in your web
browser or offer to users at a payment plan and method of your choosing. We've
got this great app store for you to use that only costs $100 a year to submit
apps to and we keep 30% of all the money you make on your game.

~~~
bdcravens
Most of those games you're referring to are on mobile, and even Android hasn't
received a Flash update in 4 years.

------
pan69

        Notice: The idea is not to save Flash Player, but to open source Flash!
    

What exactly is being referred to here? The Flash authoring tool I assume? As
in, the application that you install on your desktop and use to create Flash
animations with?

I think a better description of the purpose of this petition might be a good
idea. A lot of people conflate Flash and Flash Player.

~~~
roblabla
No, they're talking about the player. But they don't want to save it from
doom, but instead to preserve it so all the current code targeting flash can
still potentially be used.

Think of it like an emulator. It would still be stripped from browsers, but
you could download the SWF and play it locally, in the "flash emulator".
Except it'd be based on the real thing, and as such, would achieve perfect
compat right away.

~~~
niutech
You still will be able to run your SWF files after 2020 using the latest Flash
Player Projector.exe.

~~~
firmgently
To play a .swf you can use the standalone Flash Player.

A projector is a different thing, it's a special .exe version of the .swf with
the Flash Player bundled _at compile time_. So the concept of using the latest
projector to view an old .swf doesn't make sense.

Sorry for the pedantry but that's the third time I've read it used incorrectly
on this thread.

~~~
niutech
According to the official Adobe Flash downloads page
([https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.ht...](https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html)),
Projector is also known as standalone Flash player:

> Adobe Flash Player 26 (Win, Mac & Linux) debugger (aka debug player or
> content debuggers) and standalone (aka projectors) players for Flex and
> Flash developers.

------
Animats
Just for historical reasons, it's good to have the source out there. Fifty or
a hundred years from now, someone may want very badly to recover some old .swf
file.

------
midnitewarrior
I don't think anybody wants to see what's actually under the covers. Also, I'm
pretty sure they've licensed patents from other participants, so it's not very
likely they would bother trying to figure out all those details.

Future history does need a copy they can use in the future to look at web
sites of the past though. Content that relies on proprietary technology will
be lost in the annals of history.

------
scj
Open sourcing code allows a new vector for finding vulnerabilities. Just
because the software reaches its EOL doesn't mean it is removed from every
computer.

I believe that open sourcing Flash should be done for the sake of software
preservation. But I would recommend 2025 (end of life for Windows 10 and IE11)
as the earliest release date.

------
BatFastard
You have to understand the source of the problem. The browsers do NOT want to
support this level of plug-in since it is less secure. That is why the Unity
plug-in went away, that is why ALL plugs ins are going away. Flash is still
alive as AIR in mobile and desktop. But it is DEAD in browsers.

------
joe_momma
There should just be a Flash only browser with an HTML5 blocker muhahaha.

------
mirekrusin
"So Adobe, you're killing Flash now. That's fine since you apparently can't
fix it."

Seriously, why start with sentences like that if you really care about it
being open-sourced?

~~~
pkstn
Changed it, thanks for the comment!

------
unsignedint
Aren't more of recent application for Flash is to deliver DRMed video while
rest moving to something else like HTML5. If this is the case opensource Flash
won't really help...

------
Brajeshwar
A bunch of us suggested this to Macromedia around 2005. Unfortunately, it
never became a popular topic. Adobe took it over and well; turtles all the way
down.

------
dorado13
Sometimes it is hard to say "goo bye". But we have to. Like growing kids, we
should stock our kid's stuff in an old chest and forget about it. If someone
really wants to reminisce or something like this, save your own local copy of
flash and use it as u want. But in face of web community such things like
flash really have to die. Thus how new directions of web will born.

------
flashplayer_exe
Browser vendors are already disabling flash by default. There is no need to
"kill" anything. Even if it were opensourced today it will still meet the same
fate. The only people who care about open sourcing are those who want a
standalone flash player for archival purposes.

Gnash works pretty well with non AS3 noninteractive movies and looping swfs.
Most games are still broken though.

------
pkstn
The idea is not to preserve Flash player as is, but to open source Flash spec
to make it possible to archive all the good stuff out there!

------
zwetan
what about petitioning Google so they open source Swiffy ?

To me Google Chrome is the one responsible for killing Flash, Adobe is just
playing catch up.

------
jaimex2
Big star from me.

I never understood the hate flash got, sure it was abused by ads but to this
date I have never seen the same level of animated and vibrant websites that
were around in its peak.

Everything is the same old bootstrapped template now, its pretty boring.

------
Popster
I'm all for a Flash emulator that emulates the functions that Flash currently
has, but do not start an open source project that adds more functions and
security issues and whatnot. Any further development must be stopped.

------
kahlonel
I would do anything to preserve those white buttons with glowy green borders.

------
odammit
I would love to see what kind of Simcities are in that source code

------
rhabarba
Where can I sign a petition to let Javascript die before 2020?

------
adaml2017
yes! great idea. Also quick observation, Flash is so hard to get rid of
because it's still a very useful tool. We're lucky to have had it in the
2000's

------
cgb223
There are a ton of Black Hat hackers who would love to see this petition
become real

Shut it down, the internet is massively more secure without flash

------
prodikl
ActionScript is still loved by the Starling community. I don't really think
i'll miss the swf format, though

~~~
bdcravens
Adobe Animate isn't being EOL'ed.

------
dhosek
How about a petition to have Adobe put into all versions of Flash going
forward code to disable the flash player on the EOL date so that the danger of
security vulnerabilities from the damn thing will be greatly reduced.

~~~
nextlevelwizard
Browser vendors are already dropping support, so there isn't much reason to
double dip

------
brockvond
me personally, I love this idea and would work on this in spare time as long
as my bottle of TUMS is within arms reach. Very Cool, Very Cool.

------
xilni
Dear god no, please just let it die, I don't care about Badger, Badger, snake
or Flash hentai flash game nostalgia that much.

~~~
pat_space
What about the end of the world? Are you le tired?

~~~
xilni
Yes, most definitely le tired of having to deal with Flash.

------
dim13
Let it go gracefully.

------
rbanffy
Please, let it die.

------
covamalia
Just let it die!

------
c4ncri
Let flash die. We don't need it. We got HTML5.

~~~
mgamache
No one who has used both significantly really thinks HTML5 can provide an
equivalent alternative to the Flash platform today. Sure it can cover a lot of
the common use cases and it can be made to work, but it's really a poor
substitute (albeit without the security and other issues). HTML5 is the
future, but it still needs work.

------
imagetic
Let it die.

------
madshiva
If you want save flash, just install an virtual machine with WinXP and stay in
the past. Too much website still use flash.. come on they have been warned so
many times, flash must die.

------
yuhong
This will probably take years of course. Hopefully the H.264 patents will
expire at least not long afterwards.

------
ram_rar
Its already open sourced. Its called HTML5!

------
bricss
Burn it to hell ∆

------
sureste
I support this. In 20 years when no one is using it anymore and the source
code is released for academic purposes.

------
CrankyBear
Really? Really!? All the years we've suffered with this, this insecure "Thing*
and you want to give it eternal life in open source? Not just no, but hell no.
You want video? Use HTML 5's Theora, H264, or WebM.

~~~
nextlevelwizard
I take it you are going to convert all of the Flash videos into these formats
for us?

------
jayflux
Even if this did happen I doubt browsers would support it (as already
mentioned) If nostalgia is the problem, it would be far less effort to
recompile those games into html5

~~~
Qwertious
Recompiling the games into html5 would be far easier if we had source-code to
reverse-engineer to create a translator with.

------
omarforgotpwd
Yikes. How about a petition to burn it with fire? Petition to erase all
mention of flash from history books?

------
mtgx
Isn't Flash player's code super-messy by now? (a hint towards that could be
all the vulnerabilities found for it every week). Open sourcing it would have
to dramatically improve the code quality and in a relatively short period of
time (2 years max), otherwise browser vendors would never go along with it
(nor should they).

Sounds like a daunting task, especially if no big organization/leader takes up
the task of cleaning it up, the way OpenBSD did with LibreSSL.

~~~
Houshalter
You don't necessarily need to fix all the bugs. It just needs to be sandboxed
properly. In the extreme case you could compile it to web assembly and run it
inside the browsers existing wasm sandbox.

I think all the comments are missing the point. This is about preserving our
digital history. A huge amount of content exists only in flash. It would be
sad to see it all disappear. It's even being used in important AI research,
with openAI making a ton of old flash games available for training AIs. I have
fond memories of many simple flash games I used to play on the school
computers. I still have a bunch of .swf files I saved that won't open anymore.

~~~
andai
How come they won't open?

~~~
Houshalter
I have no idea. Whenever I try to open the file, firefox and chrome just
download it. It used to work fine.

(Also even back in the day some flash games had built in DRM that required
contacting an external server to run. And I have no idea how to fix that.)

~~~
firmgently
Maybe your .swfs need to be embedded in an HTML page to work? If they use
external assets referenced by relative URLs the path is relative to the
embedding HTML page (this used to cause some confusion).

If you really want to get them working you can try:

\- Opening them in the debug player, maybe you'll see a trace that gives you a
clue.

\- Decompiling (with the right software this is often quite successful...
'Sothink' used to be pretty good) , opening in the Flash authoring environment
and re-exporting.

\- Trying older versions of Flash Player (Adobe still provides them for
download)

