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April 25, 2007
Flex To Go Open Source!
Today Adobe has announced that it will be open sourcing Flex by making the source code for the Flex SDK available under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). This includes everything needed to build Flex applications, including the source to the ActionScript libraries in the SDK, the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers, and the ActionScript debugger.In addition to the Open Source license, the Flex SDK will continue to be available under a commercial license to provide customers and partners flexibility in how they license the Flex SDK. We will also continue to offer other products that use the Flex SDK, such as Flex Builder, Flex Data Services, and ColdFusion under a commercial license.
Unlike what we did with the Tamarin project a little while ago, for Flex Adobe plans to sponsor and host the Flex SDK project infrastructure. This includes the open bug database, source repository and project planning forums. The initial committers will be the Adobe Flex engineering team. Members of the current Flex SDK development, QA, and product teams will become full-time contributors to this open source project. Adobe expects to add external committers to the project as we roll out the infrastructure and governance process for the Flex SDK project.
I am really happy about this. At Adobe, we have been working hard to improve how we work with developers. In many ways, our initial release of Flex 2 was the first major step in this direction, by creating a framework and tools that really appeal to developers. Open sourcing Flex is the next big step and I think will accomplish a number of important things. First, it should help us reach a new set of developers. More importantly, it will give the community a bigger voice in how we move Flex forward and allow them to directly contribute to its evolution.
We are also hoping that this encourages others to create tools targeting Flex. While I'm really proud of the job we've done on Flex Builder, we want there to be a diversity of tools at different price points and targeting different users. And though it will create competition for Flex Builder, it will ultimately help Flex and its users be more successful.
You can get all of the details at www.adobe.com/go/opensourceflex.
Posted by Mark Anders at 07:37 PM | Comments (3)
April 05, 2007
Great Article on Flash, Flex and Apollo in The Guardian
Charles Arthur wrote a great piece on Flash, Flex and Apollo in today's tech section of The Guardian, based on an interview I did with him when I visited the UK a little while ago. Overall, I was really happy with the contents and tone of the story. He really hit on the key points I was trying to get across about how Flash has evolved, how we are moving it forward with Flex and Apollo, and how it is enabling people to do new things on the web.However, while reading Ryan Stewart's post about the story, he said "I’m a card-carrying member of the Mark Anders fan club, but saying that Flash is the new publishing tool of the century is a bit much" and two things confused me. First, members of my fan club have secret decoder rings, not member-ship cards, but more importantly, I had no idea what he was talking about with "the new publishing tool of the century" line. Where did that come from?
So I went back and re-read the article and it was then that I found out that it was actually the title of the story and that I supposedly said it! Now, I don't remember using those words, and interestingly, in the article they do not appear within quotes. However, in looking at the context of the statement, I think I understand what it means.
One of the things that I did talk to Charles about was that the type of content that people publish on the Internet has been changing and moving beyond text and images . YouTube of course has been a runaway success in web video and one of the key things on MySpace has been for bands to publish their music via embedded music players. In each of these cases, both of which are among the most popular sites on the internet, Flash has been the enabling technology.
Now, did Flash create web video? No, and neither did YouTube. But in the many articles I've read about YouTube's success, one of the key differentiators mentioned is that their video player "didn't require users to download and install software."
Of course, this isn't technically true. People did have to download the Flash Player. However, because we have always kept it small and made installation smooth and worked hard to get it on the vast majority of machines out there, the experience for almost everyone has been that they go to YouTube and it just works.
So while I don't recall saying that "Flash is the new publishing tool of the century", I do believe that as we've moved into the 21st century, the web has transformed to include more than just text and images, and that Flash has been an enabler of that shift to a richer web experience.
Posted by Mark Anders at 03:22 PM | Comments (6)