« Great Article on Flash, Flex and Apollo in The Guardian | Main | Flex 3, AIR and Flash Player Betas Now Available! »
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 April 25, 2007 07:37 PM
Comments
Mark,
Great report. I've put up two videos we filmed this morning of my visit to Adobe to talk about the open sourcing of Flex.
http://www.podtech.net/home/podtech/2826/breaking-news-adobe-flash-flex-goes-open-sourc
http://www.podtech.net/home/podtech/2827/the-architecture-of-flash
Posted by: Robert Scoble at April 25, 2007 09:40 PM
Read about this on digg.com
It is a very interesting topic and I wonder how it will develop, I don't know if all additions have to be posted via the adobe site and how they will decide what to incorporate.
We may end up seeing different distros of Flex like with Linux. I hope not, too confusing!
Posted by: MediaRoots at May 4, 2007 04:49 PM
Flex going open source is a great news for open source evangelist like me. This will bring in new ideas, concept and create a formidable flex community.
Posted by: MayorBrain at August 10, 2007 03:14 PM