

Adobe has released the SWF file format specification - timr
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

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wmf
I'll just quote John Gilmore:

"Freeing up specs for things that the community has already reverse-engineered
makes for good publicity, and eliminates a legal EULA issue that Adobe was
likely to lose in court in most countries, but doesn't change anything
substantial."

[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-
dev/2008-05/msg00004...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-
dev/2008-05/msg00004.html)

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Hoff
The reception here is somewhat surprising. This release should be welcomed.
Encouraged. Supported.

Open specifications do change the landscape.

For all sides involved. For Adobe, for Adobe's commercial competition and
current and future Adobe partners, and for the Open Source world.

Having both open file format specifications and competing products perceived
to have fewer features or lower quality allows you advantages in product bids.
It's a good place to be for Adobe; it's a low-cost variation of the freemium
model, and one that Adobe has used before.

Postscript and now PDF have survived in the wild for some years now, though
you'll particularly note that the specs for PDF have been a moving target. It
is nearly certain you'll see these newly-released specifications evolve over
time.

Open specifications can inoculate Adobe against anti-competitive legal
proceedings that can arise in various jurisdictions.

It also means that other entities are open to develop both competing and
supporting products and to participate in the community without fear of
exposure to the (il)legalities of reverse-engineering. And from the technical
difficulties and the upgrade- and compatibility-related risks of reverse-
engineering -- available specifications make for better open source, and more-
and cross-compatible products.

And the release means that an organization that is a sufficiently large target
to draw the legal attention of Adobe is not going to get tangled up with Adobe
in the process of actually proving that the EULA was unenforceable in various
courts.

Yes, Adobe likely has underlying competitive motivations that supported the
specification release. They're a commercial entity, and they make money
selling software products. Regardless, Adobe appears to have done a good and
useful thing for the community.

I'll thank Adobe for releasing the SWF specifications.

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bporterfield
I think that the point is being missed here. Adobe's intentions probably have
little to do with player development and a lot more to do with Silverlight &
Canvas.

Adobe's hope is that opening a platform with 98% penetration will further
increase platform acceptance as the standard for rich media on the web.

Think about it from a developers POV - let's say that you're making a choice
between two rich media platforms on the web - both proprietary, closed systems
that require proprietary plugins and code built on proprietary languages.
Tough choice, eh? Maybe you pick the one with a language you're more familiar
with, or one thats been really hyped recently.

Now consider a slightly different scenario: What if you had to choose between
an open, standardized platform built on an open language with open-source
tools that can create applications that run on the web in any browser or your
mac, windows or linux desktop. How does that compare with the proprietary
choice?

Adobe has consistently moved towards an open solution both for its development
tools and its platform, no doubt in response to competitive threats. Microsoft
is trying to inch that way as well but seems a step behind.

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izak30
Probably has to do with the recent canvas progress, and John Resig's new
javascript. <\--total speculation

~~~
rtf
This is a somewhat blunt way to put it, but it has to do with "you weren't
paying attention to the Adobe Open Screen announcement on May 1st." SWF, FLV,
and AMF were all freed then and, apart from developers already working with
Flash, it didn't seem to make great waves because of the sudden, low-hype
nature of the announcement. A lot of the comments that day - here and
elsewhere - were confused, cynical remarks along the lines of "I'll believe it
when I see it," when they had _already_ put everything up.

The direction of Flash has been towards greater openness since around the time
Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005: One year later they released a new major
version(9) with a new VM and a completely refactored API, and along with that
they released an open source Flex 2 compiler.

Adobe would probably open source their own player and ensure it becomes the
"de-facto standard implementation," if it were not licensing-encumbered.

~~~
izak30
Thanks for the clarification. Not that I think it could be done in a few days,
but I still see it as reactionary to developments in other technologies.

