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."

Re:Not impressed

[visualight]

I think that if they supported their CS suite (even if all they did was a winelib conversion) on Linux, Microsoft would be dead in three years.

I would cheerfully pay Adobe for their userland apps that are supported on Linux, opensource or not.

Re:Not impressed

[stunt_penguin]

If Adobe's software was on Linux I'd definitely get Ubuntu on here and start using it. I'd still have to dual-boot to get to use 3DS MAX (which doesn't run well in Wine when pushed) but I could quite happily do 99% of my multimedia work.

Do you mean OpenLaszlo

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

OpenLaszlo [openlaszlo.org], a opensource toolkit that takes declaritive XML and compiles it to SWF. What it can do for datasets and backend interactivity is just awesome. Recommended cause it's neat plus it's way saner then HTML (imho), as long you're doing applications and not semantic stuff, this is where it's at. mmm. replication managers.

Re:Flex and db access

[joshv]

This is exactly what my company does. We write custom front ends in flex to visualize data. Flex has extensive support for accessing server side data via various remoting APIs.

Re:Why do Adobe even care about Silverlight?

[blueZhift]

I think Adobe cares about Silverlight in part because Flash development is still perceived to have a high barrier to entry because of the cost of Flash MX. I myself only became aware of the possibility of using the free Flex SDK to develop Flash apps recently. So in light of Microsoft's announcement, I think Adobe doesn't want those who might be swayed to forget about Flex. Open sourcing Flex is definitely a good move. It should result in some good free tools for Flash development which should help fend off the threat presented by Silverlight. I'm still planning to take a look at Silverlight, but I'll definitely be giving Flex a look too. And I'm sure that Adobe remembers that Netscape thought they had an insurmountable lead back in the day too, and look where they are now... Never underestimate the power of the dark side!

Re:Flex Builder 2 *DOES* run under Linux

[Beau6183]

Clarification: You can HACK FB2 to run under Linux, but it does not have any native support (no installer, no technical support). We recently had a meeting with the Flex team at my company and their view is that Linux does not represent the majority of their market, and at the time they were here they expressed no immediate interest in moving toward a Linux-supported product. I really wish they'd extend the open-source movement to FB2 as well because quite honestly -- it sucks. It's a severe memory hog, it is lacking several key bits of functionality like automatic code formatting for ActionScript and MXML, no built-in support for refactoring, and is a pain to get working with relatively-pathed library projects.

Re:Do you mean OpenLaszlo

[yossie]

Openlaszlo does all this, of course, and much like Flex, OpenLaszlo can output a Web2.0 app as a flash file requiring a flash plugin to run BUT it can ALSO output a dhtml file (which will run in all modern browsers) requiring NO plugin. There is a commitment to output Java ME as well, in the near future. You really have to see OpenLaszlo apps in dhtml to understand how powerful dhtml can be - Google apps are boring and dull in comparison (though astonishingly functional, to be sure..) The fact that the same source will be able to compile into any of these (and more, there is even a proof-of-concept SVG output generator..) is not only unique but opens up choices that none of the other players in this field can.

Re:Game UI

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for EA, specifically on development of the front-end.

They've been using a Flash implementation called APT for their front-ends for some time now. Originally developed at Tiburon, I believe its now standard across the company. I was never able to find out the details of the licensing agreement between them and Adobe/Macromedia.

In my experience, Flash can be incredibly effective for building game FEs. The best part is that artists can use the (very mature) Flash authoring tools to import and manipulate their own art and animations. ... Just don't let them write any Actionscript. :P

D.

The last mile of software

[rodentia]

There are eight ways to Sunday for solving the last mile problem for software (the presentation tier) in a robust fashion. For all but the most trivial of applications, this solution is more trouble than it's worth. Unlike the last mile of the network, the target is not a fixed location.

The shrewd architect knows that there is always a rewrite. A dependency like this at the presentation layer is a liability. Whether interpreter is proprietary or not has little impact on these costs.

Re:Flex and db access

[peterarm]

Flex can talk to anything on the server side by passing XML over HTTPService -- Java, .NET, Rails, etc. You can also use RemoteObject to talk AMF3 to a server.

Shameless plug: see my signature for my book on the Flex + Rails combination :)