Today Adobe announced the Open Screen Project which aims to bring the Flash player to as many different devices as possible.
Cutting through the jargon on the press release, the most significant points are that Adobe are removing restrictions on usage of the Flash and Flash video specifications (SWF, FLV, and F4V), publishing the device porting layer APIs, and removing the licensing fees for the next major version of the Flash Player and AIR for devices. Which means that developers will now be able to port Flash to any device, and distribute and deploy it for free. Additionally, the Flash Cast and AMF data transfer protocols will be published.
While Flash Player has long been an almost ubiquitous platform for desktop PCs, this new move aims to do the same for phones and portable devices. Ryan Stewart and Dave McAllister from Adobe have both written blog posts on the announcement.
Essentially, the Flash player is now about as open as it can possibly be without being open source. It’s an interesting move by Adobe, and I’m sure many will be watching to see what comes out of it.
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How about (64bit) Linux in the first place? C’mon Adobe …
May 1st, 2008 at 7:39 pm
That’s really great news, more future phones will now be able to have flash support. For example, UIQ3 based symbian phones don’t have a flash player yet, and as the developers said, getting flash there is not a technical obstacle, but more a legal one. Glad to see this obstacle being removed.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
This is excellent news, and means we should actually have some 64bit flash players available soon. A big thumbs-up to Adobe for doing the right thing.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Translation: Adobe realized they needed to beat the mobile version of Silverlight to market.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:29 am
“Flash in the morning, Flash in the evening, Flash at supper time! When you can have on a bagel, you can have Flash at anytime!”
…I’m not so sure this is a good thing…
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:18 am
Matt said: “How about (64bit) Linux in the first place? C’mon Adobe …”
The way I read the announcement, anyone will be free to make their own Flash player now. Relying on Adobe to get with the program on a 64-bit Linux player might not be necessary any more.
d
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Does this mean IE can finally get rid of that annoying click-to-click-to-start “feature”??
Atg
May 9th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Just what we need: more Flash – aaargh!
May 14th, 2008 at 5:17 am