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From: Bruce Montague <Bruce_Montague@symantec.com>
To: "flex-dev@incubator.apache.org" <flex-dev@incubator.apache.org>
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 13:13:24 -0800
Subject: RE: Flex 5 in haxe
Thread-Topic: Flex 5 in haxe
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Hi, I do not know that much about Flex, the history of Flex, or all the oth=
er background relating to this thread, etc.. How realistic would it be for =
an open source community to write an open source, portable, (likely vanilla=
 C), equivalent of  Flash Player and the AVM? Maybe not including all of th=
e features, but a good-enough subset? Haven't there been a couple of attemp=
ts to do this, some with earlier versions of donated code? (Was that really=
 open source code?) Why did none of these efforts succeed? Patents on codec=
s and the like?

Thanks,

-bruce


-----Original Message-----
From: Gordon Smith [mailto:gosmith@adobe.com]=20
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 12:58 PM
To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: RE: Flex 5 in haxe

> From what I previously read, I don't think we were getting an updated Fal=
con compiler that will generate AVM3 code.
> They were not planning on open-sourcing that (but correct me if I'm wrong=
 in that aspect).

That's correct. Adobe has no plans to open-source its new AS4-for-V12 compi=
ler.

- Gordon

-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Kwiatkowski [mailto:nicholas@spoon.as]
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 12:27 PM
To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: Flex 5 in haxe

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Stefan Horochovec < stefan.horochovec@gmai=
l.com> wrote:

[snip]


> The development of the new VM and AS4 specification is not reported or=20
> discussed with Apache Flex, knowing that we depend exclusively of=20
> Flash Player and AIR to execute applications. This in my opinion is terri=
ble.
>
> Again we will have to wait for an update from Falcon to generate code=20
> for the V12, this delay the progress of the Flex when we are expecting=20
> more and more code from Adobe.
>
> I'm not saying that we should use haxe, or some other compiler, just=20
> think the time is an even broader discussion. The Flex should continue=20
> only with Flash Player / Adobe AIR runtime?
>

This is, and has been par for the course.  When Adobe doesn't want to hear
us whine and moan, they close off development.   It happened before (and in
many more products than just Flex/Flash), and I'm sure it will happen often=
 in the future.  They feel they can surround themselves with "stakeholders"
(a small, select subset of customers that their marketing team found them)
to make major changes to platforms, products, etc.   At least this time,
they were pretty clear in saying we wouldn't have a seat in the table for t=
he future.  Previous times they gave us the illusion that we did.

>From what I previously read, I don't think we were getting an updated Falco=
n compiler that will generate AVM3 code.  They were not planning on open-so=
urcing that (but correct me if I'm wrong in that aspect).

I'm pretty sure the community as a whole over the last 11 months have deter=
mined to break our dependency of the Flash Player.  We've had a LOT of prop=
osals on how to do it -- none of them executed yet.  The silliest of the bu=
nch in my opinion is porting to HaXe or starting from scratch.  Our power i=
s leveraged from Adobe's initial 200,000 hours of labor over the last many =
years.  We got an awesome code-base that while, it needs some major tweaks,=
 is is really good shape.  Dumping out the baby with the bath-water is not =
the way to go on a platform that is mature and used by
MANY large enterprises.   That being said -- this is now in the Apache
world and I can't stop anybody from doing that, but I won't also be helping=
 redo Flex from scratch.

-Nick