I only ever seen the flash progression in those times from peeking over the wall at the other side so people might be able to correct me, but I dont think the adobe acquisition did flash a whole lot of favours, it managed to get its 98% etc penetration well before adobe was ever around.
Back in those days flash vs html for plain websites was a serious debate, under adobe while video has got massively popular, flash has been further and further marginalised as a tool almost only for games, adverts and video.
I certainly couldnt see macromedia open sourcing flash any more than I could see adobe doing it without this pressure, if anything I think macromedia were even more aggressive with shutting down alternative players, at that time they were competing with html which broke in every browser, they wanted to make certain it was write once run everywhere.
To be honest I am entirely biased, but its always seemed obvious to me that open web standards will very very slowly replace virtually everything proprietary on the web. right now there is not one decent web publishing tool and I am pretty stunned that adobe havent stepped up to produce one yet (dreamweaver does not count, and neither does flash exporting canvas). Heres hoping whoever does makes sure it works on linux :)
Back in those days flash vs html for plain websites was a serious debate, under adobe while video has got massively popular, flash has been further and further marginalised as a tool almost only for games, adverts and video.
I certainly couldnt see macromedia open sourcing flash any more than I could see adobe doing it without this pressure, if anything I think macromedia were even more aggressive with shutting down alternative players, at that time they were competing with html which broke in every browser, they wanted to make certain it was write once run everywhere.
To be honest I am entirely biased, but its always seemed obvious to me that open web standards will very very slowly replace virtually everything proprietary on the web. right now there is not one decent web publishing tool and I am pretty stunned that adobe havent stepped up to produce one yet (dreamweaver does not count, and neither does flash exporting canvas). Heres hoping whoever does makes sure it works on linux :)