
Adobe Donating Flex to Open Source Foundation - DanielRibeiro
http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/11/flex-adandoned
======
skore
"I've invested years developing significant proficiency in Flex. It now feels
like a waste of time."

That may sound like valid criticism, superficially, but I think it's very fair
to say that the impending death of Flash has been apparent for quite a while
now and this always cast a shadow on Flex. Maybe not in the few niches that it
still does survive (thrive even, in some cases), but the market that Flex
aimed at was very limited early on and in the past couple of years, with Flash
being predominantly a delivery mechanism for online video, still betting on
Flex as "Internet Technology" seems ludicrous.

"I would have much preferred to see a transition where Flex and HTML 5 could
peacefully co-exist"

If you think that, you simply don't understand the technology. In fact, many
of the criticisms that are quoted seem to be this: People who are disgruntled
that their bet on a proprietary piece of technology didn't pan out. Welcome to
the Internet.

~~~
jinushaun
I simply don't understand the whole doom and gloom talk around Silverlight and
Flash. AIR is still alive and uses all your Flash/ActionScript skills. Same
with Windows 8 using XAML and C#. Your .NET knowledge isn't suddenly obsolete.

As for me, I will be coding in Flash for a long time in the foreseeable
future. Flash is huge in the UX research space and I don't see HTML 5
replacing it any time soon unless the tools reach the sophistication and speed
of the Flash IDE. There isn't even a standard graphics library yet for Canvas.
How long did it take for the industry to standardise around jquery?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Ultimately Adobe gets its money from Flash licensing. Adobe knows that serving
as a video distribution vector is a fragile business and that "marketshare"
could disappear overnight quite easily. What matters most for the viability of
Flash is not the fact that it's ubiquitous, nor the fact that it "does more"
than the competition. What matters is the popularity among developers.

And Adobe has clued in to the fact that Flash development is well past the
inflection point on the way to decline. They could ride Flash into the ground
or they could change horses when they're still doing well. If Adobe lets
another player dominate marketshare in the new ecosystem while they are
distracted with squeezing the last drops of blood out of the Flash turnip then
they would miss out on a huge opportunity and suddenly be in the worst
strategic position imaginable.

Right now, before Flash is well and truly dead, is the smart time for Adobe to
transition and try to plant their feet firmly in the territory where it
appears web development is heading (html5).

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
Their best move would be to create an IDE just like Flash but for HTML5; and
with an embedded Javascript library with a syntax very similar to AS3.

~~~
sbuk
<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/>

------
olihb
I invested a lot of time in learning and deploying Flex. It's been a lifesaver
when I had to code quick visualizations, dashboards, analytic tools, db
interfaces, etc.

Now I would like to transition over HTML5, but it seems that all the tools and
frameworks are incomplete, not easy to integrate, etc. and now I need to know
javascript, html, css, etc. and the language to code the backend (In my case
usually very CPU intensive). With Flex I only needed to know as3 and my
backend language.

What would be best framework similar to Flex that would abstract the ugliness
of javascript, html and css? It's not my idea of a fun time to fight layout
bugs and different javascript/css/html implementations.

~~~
robin_reala
jQuery abstracts DOM weirdness across browsers. Learning plain JavaScript will
give you a deeper understanding of why jQuery does certain things. Using
node.js on the backend will allow you to transfer your JS skills over.

Regarding HTML and CSS, your best best when starting is to use a quick
framework to get you up and running. I’d suggest Twitter’s Bootstrap:
<http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/> . End of the day you’re going to have
to learn them yourself though. You can make things much easier for yourself by
restricting your browser compatibility.

------
bad_user
Here's what Jeremy Allison said in the following article:
<http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/122>

_Proprietary environments are a trap

I used to be a Microsoft Windows programmer, as well as a UNIX/POSIX
programmer. The knowledge I've gained about programming POSIX is still useful,
even though I learned a lot of it over twenty years ago. My Windows knowledge
is now rather out of date, and getting more so over the years. It isn't worth
my time anymore to keep up with each increasingly baroque change to the
Windows environment. Just as an example, over this time the latest "hot"
communication paradigm that Microsoft recommended developers use in Windows
changed from NetBEUI, to NetDDE, then OLE, followed by OLE2, then COM,
DCE/RPC, DCOM, and now currently seems to be Web Services (SOAP and the like).
Meanwhile, in the UNIX world the Berkeley socket API was useful in the 1980's
and is still the core of all communications frameworks in the open standards
world. All the UNIX RPC, object and Web Service environments are built on that
stable base._

------
vetler
"In order for large enterprises to invest heavily into a technology, they need
some assurances that the technology is viable and the viability often comes in
the form of the backing of corporate stewards. "

That, or you could bet on open standards instead, which probably has corporate
backing as well. Seems to me that the backing of corporations on proprietary
technology doesn't always work out - corporations do go down the drain
sometimes, or withdraw support.

------
BonoboBoner
I wonder whether IT is the only industry where sophisticated products get
thrown away after years of development simply due to fashion-like trends. In
mechanical engineering for example, do they throw away a new engine design
just because a competitor, that builds a nice looking car, says that it sucks?
I believe th IT industry is crippled because it is filled with intangible
assets that can easily be made incompatible to each other. Why cant we have
international standards that prohibit this sort of anti-competitive crippling.

~~~
rimantas
If you throw your product away just because some competitor said that is
sucked, you probably don't belong in this business anyway.

What you call anti-competititve crippling I call enabling and it has nothing
to do with anti-competitivines.

Do you say, that carburetor is better than injection? Vacuum tubes and relays
are for building computers than IC?

------
angryasian
this is not what we want adobe. Open the flash player.

~~~
liquidcool
I completely agree and have been saying this for years. When Apple defended
their decision by saying it's a closed platform, that would have been a good
time (although that didn't save Java, either).

When OS X Safari users were complaining of crashes, that also would have been
a good time. I stopped Flex development when Flash started crashing Firefox on
Windows. If they can't get it stable on #1 developer platform, I figure
there's no hope.

------
Volpe
Just to note: This is a licensing change (I think). Because flex developers
have had access to ALL the flex code for years now. (And all the embarrassing
comments as well ;) )

~~~
teyc
It is signalling. Enterprises are meant to understand that this is the end of
the road as far as new improvements to Flex is concerned.

------
joke
the comparisons of flash and html5 are nonsensical.

flash can do all sorts of things. i can remember when it was mainly for
animations. playing video is just one of the many things flash can do.

there _may_ have been a need for something to replace mime and plugins, and
for whatever reason macromedia's shockwave flash (swf) emerged as an interim
solution. but adobe just abused its position. they are not an honest company
when it comes to web users. they cannot be trusted.

html5 solves the problem(?) that flash was being used for, namely, playing
media files through the browser. but we will have open source and we don't
have to deal with a shady company like adobe.

html5 is not a flash replacement. you don't "transition" from flash to html5.
html5 just keeps adobe and their sneaky tactics away from web video. and
that's good for web users.

still, the fact remains, plugins (open source code not part of mozilla or
another other browser, e.g., vlc or ffmpeg) are better media players than
browsers. so i'm left to wonder if all this was really necessary.

stream this, stream that, but youtube is still using progressive download. so
go figure.

last i checked mime still works. yet it was pretty much abandoned by the
browser teams.

i'll bet there is really no good reason either.

just as there was no good reason we should be letting adobe control web video.
adios adobe.

~~~
johnbender
I'm curious if you have specific examples of where Adobe was "not an honest
company"?

~~~
sbuk
Selling software at inflated prices in other territories is pretty dishonest.
For instance the cost of the design suite in the US is $1,299 while in the UK
it is £1,032 ($1,638) before taxes are applied. While I accept that prices can
be variable depending on exchange rates, this is downright dishonest.

~~~
macspoofing
>For instance the cost of the design suite in the US is $1,299 while in the UK
it is £1,032 ($1,638) before taxes are applied.

Tell me for what software that isn't true. For some reason every publisher
charges more for software (and games) in Europe and Australia, when compared
to Canada and US.

~~~
sbuk
That's absolutely true and Adobe are not the worst. Autodesk are really bad at
this; $3995 for AutoCAD in the US vs $7,635 in the UK. This doesn't make Adobe
any less dishonest though. Software piracy is a complete anathema, but with
gouging and disparity like this it's quite clear why it goes on and begs the
question as to who is the thief and who is the victim.

