Adobe Open Sources Flex SDK Under MPL

andy_from_nc writes "Adobe announced that they are open sourcing their Flex SDK under the Mozilla Public License incrementally by December. This move comes on the heels of Microsoft's announcement of their Silverlight and Adobe's CEO's criticism of it. Adobe's action will likely please other open source developers who use Flex, like me, and offers hope that we'll see a full open source version of Flash one day. You can read Adobe's FAQ on the move as well."

Not impressed

[WindBourne]

Adobe is putting small pieces on Linux (and other OSS), just when they feel attacked by MS. If they really wanted to keep doing well, they would move ALL of their work to Linux. Once they do that, they are no longer compete ting directly against MS IN MS's BACKYARD. That is a battle that adobe will lose if they try to take on MS directly.

Flex Builder 2 *DOES* run under Linux

[WarwickRyan]

Flex Builder 2 is provided as an Eclipse plugin, so it's platform independant.

Quick google for "flex under linux" returns a blog detailing support: http://blog.davr.org/2007/04/22/flex-builder-201-u nder-linux/ [davr.org].

Adobe really impress me with Flex..

Re:Nifty but confusing.

[colanut]

Yes, you can hand write the ActionScrpt/Flex in a text editor and use the free SDK to command line compile the .swf file to be included in your web page. As long as you know the language and syntax.

The $700 package is a ide that has the compiler, debugger and a graphical design window to help you out.

Re:You fell for it, huh?

[uss_valiant]

Adobe isn't open-sourcing any of the server/data access/interop components.

HTTPService is included in the SDK. It's primitive and slower compared to Flash remoting using RemoteObject but it gets you started. That having said, it would be really nice if RemoteObject was included in the SDK since there are already some FLOSS components for the server-side part of the remoting.

Re:Game UI

[Beau6183]

Viewable source is a compilation option in flex applications (example: http://examples.adobe.com/flex2/inproduct/sdk/flex store/flexstore.html [adobe.com] right click to view source). The beauty of Flex / flash is that it's contained in it's own "cross platform" VM, making it totally independent of the browser. I would think that any tight integration into any browser would be a poor move for adobe/flex/flash.

Re:Flex Builder 2 *DOES* run under Linux

[bcrowell]

..and you can always use your own editor and compile with the free compiler.

1. MTASC doesn't support actionscript 3.
2. Haxe does support actoinscript 3, but it's a different language, so it isn't source code compatible with Adobe's compilers.
3. MP3 is the only audio codec that's supported by flash, and the mpegla licensing terms make it illegal to distribute MP3 decoders in large numbers for free, without paying royalties. (I believe ubuntu, for example, pays royalties for the privilege of distributing it for free.)
4. The Version 2 Components are not freely available. That means that if you're writing a flash app, and want to do it without paying Adobe money, you have to use another gui component library, which won't be source-code compatible with the kind of flash everybody else is writing.
5. The license of the flash spec, http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/fileforma t/license/ [adobe.com] , says "3)a. You may not use the Specification in any way to create or develop a runtime, client, player, executable or other program that reads or renders .swf files."

Summary: flash is a disaster if you want to write OSS using an OSS toolchain.

Re:You fell for it, huh?

[md17]

RemoteObject is also available with the Open Source Granite Data Services project. So for free you get:
- HTTPService (connect to any backend using any serialization you want)
- WebService (connect to SOAP)
- RemoteObject (Java remoting)