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From: Timothy Jones <Timothy.Jones@syniverse.com>
To: "'flex-dev@incubator.apache.org'" <flex-dev@incubator.apache.org>
Subject: RE: Apache Flex suggestion - dumping SWF support in favor of HTML5
 - don't listen to Steve!
Thread-Topic: Apache Flex suggestion - dumping SWF support in favor of HTML5
 - don't listen to Steve!
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Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:17:03 +0000
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Companies that base development decisions on *_current_* market share is wh=
at is short-sighted and only reinforces the status quo.  That's no better t=
han the dark ages of webdevs coding for IE4 at 800x600 resolution. =20


tlj
-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Kwiatkowski [mailto:nicholas@spoon.as]=20
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 10:52 AM
To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: Apache Flex suggestion - dumping SWF support in favor of HTML5=
 - don't listen to Steve!

To say there is no technical reason why those products take so long to be
produced on the Linux platform, that is a bit short-sighted.

First off, while Linux users account for 60% of the tech news I read, they
only really account for 2% of the desktop/laptop market-share.  1996 - 2011
was always supposed to be the year of the "linux desktop", but it never
happened.. This, to begin with is a show-stopper for most companies trying
to make money.

The other major problem is the instability of anything graphics within
Linux.  Do we make binaries that target X11?  XFree86?  The next thing on
the block?  Gnome?  KDE?   Oh?  None of those give us access to the GPU
through some common API or driver stack?   Oh, half of the graphics drivers
don't even expose the GPU?   When they do they are broken?   What? the OSS
kids decided to make the API different because they wanted it to be
different than the closed-source version the vendor provided?   At least
other platforms like BSD / Solaris / etc are not nearly as bad as this.

If you build your tools on a platform like Eclipse, you leverage a LOT of
work that others have already done -- but there are still some major
differences between the Mac/Win/Linux versions of Eclipse.  Again, if you
don't care about graphics, it is not a big deal, but if you want to do
something as simple as the Design view, it becomes much harder.

Adobe at one time stated that they didn't push forward with a Linux version
of Flash Builder because they would have needed to write a new licensing
engine.  They did the math, and decided that if they would have to charge
for the product, most people won't pay for it (who pays for Linux software?
 really?).  Heck, people won't install close-source software when it is
free, because that isn't the Linux way!   Just look at how much guff Adobe
for for their Flash Player they published (and wouldn't OS it).

I personally would like to see a descent Flex IDE that works under Linux,
but I'm not holding my breath for somebody else to create it for me.  Heck,
just getting a Linux compiler back would be a huge step forward.  But I
also know it would be on the OSS community and us to do it -- and I doubt
we will see that anytime soon.

-Nick

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 5:50 PM, Timothy Jones
<Timothy.Jones@syniverse.com>wrote:

> Just my two cents...
>
> As a Linux user and developer, I have always hated how the Linux Flash
> runtime is always seems to be a few releases behind Adobe's Windows and M=
ac
> versions, how Adobe's content creation tools (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, CS3=
,
> and even Flex Builder) aren't available on Linux AT ALL.   It took Adobe
> FOREVER to produce a decent 64-bit Linux build of Flash.  Seeing as how M=
ac
> OS is both Darwin/BSD AND Intel 64-bit-based, there is no technical reaso=
n
> it should have taken so long.
>
> I joined this list because my team at work already has a significant
> investment in Flex, and finally Flex has an opportunity to realize its tr=
ue
> potential as a fully open-source technology under Apache's guidance.  I
> will be very happy to see any progress Flex makes away from Flash.  If th=
at
> means moving towards HTML5/js, that's even better.  And it's not because
> Steve Jobs said so.
>
> The end goal I want to see is to see a complete Flex development
> environment that runs on any FreeBSD/Linux distro, produces content that
> runs in Chrome/Firefox/any-other-modern-browser, (yes, also on Linux) and
> requires not a single executable byte from adobe.com. I'll be happy to
> help test Apache Flex on many variants of that configuration for you. :-)
>
>
>
>
> tlj
>