Re: [Gnash] Gnash Digest, Vol 64, Issue 3

[Tekk]

correction: IIRC adobe is only dropping NPAPI support on *nix,
Chrome(with Pepper support) is still supported

On Sat, 3 Nov 2012 17:13:02 -0700
Devin Harper <address@hidden> wrote:

> Flash on the Web was mostly used for video (with occasional ads and
> even more occasional other things).  With the expectation that HTML5
> video will gradually take over displaying videos, and free
> implementations of HTML5 video in Firefox and other places, volunteers
> seem to have less interest nowadays in keeping a free and non-DRM'd.
> 
> Flash player running.With all the tout about HTML5 replacing Flash a
> year or so ago and then not seeing it going away in the majority of
> sites so much later, I was not considering it as a reason to abandon
> a free version of Flash. AFAIK Adobe is only retreating from Linux,
> Android, and ARM, and they plan to keep updating and developing their
> Flash player for desktop systems, so they are not going away anytime
> soon. I think content providers know this and continue to develop
> Flash applications which is why Flash has not been replaced by HTML5
> in most sites. In fact, there are mobile version of sites still just
> beginning to pop up thanks to the lack of Flash on mobile devices. As
> I am a desktop user, I am not expecting to live without Flash anytime
> soon, for the mobile *versions of* sites are the only places where a
> majority of content is distributed in HTML5 and not Flash.
> 
> Note that this task wouldn't be adding AVM2 support to Gnash. It would
> be a new code base, with as much code refactored from current Gnash as
> possible. A complete rewrite of Gnash this way could have substantial
> performance benefits, but as mentioned, this could easily turn into a
> multi-year task nobody wants to fund. Also after several years of
> development, Lightspark is still barely able to handle YouTube videos,
> much less generic flash files.
> 
> I suppose if AVM2 cannot be added to Gnash, Lightspark cannot be
> added to Gnash either. Yes, and since there are only maintainers for
> Gnash now and none of the organizations want to fund a developer to
> add to Lightspark's limited progress, there is little hope. I'll just
> keep using Flash, patiently wait for Lightspark, and adopt mobile
> HTML5 as much as I can.
> 
> 
> On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 9:00 AM, <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
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> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >    1. Re: There is another OSS Flash alternative. (John Gilmore)
> >    2. Re: There is another OSS Flash alternative. (Rob Savoye)
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2012 09:09:17 -0800
> > From: John Gilmore <address@hidden>
> > To: Devin Harper <address@hidden>
> > Cc: address@hidden
> > Subject: Re: [Gnash] There is another OSS Flash alternative.
> > Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> >
> > The Gnash team spent significant effort toward making gnash work
> > with AVM2, but AVM2 was very badly documented and we never got it to
> > initialize a working AVM2 environment.  Then gnash's traditional
> > funding sources ran out (for unrelated reasons).
> >
> > Now that we have Lightspeed as a "proof of concept" about how AVM2
> > works, it should be possible for volunteers to debug and evolve the
> > AVM2 support in Gnash.  But few free software volunteers know or
> > care much about Flash.  It takes substantial expertise to debug and
> > complete an interpreter whose main job is to run other peoples'
> > mostly-binary-only programs, from a poorly-documented binary
> > representation.
> >
> > Flash on the Web was mostly used for video (with occasional ads and
> > even more occasional other things).  With the expectation that HTML5
> > video will gradually take over displaying videos, and free
> > implementations of HTML5 video in Firefox and other places,
> > volunteers seem to have less interest nowadays in keeping a free
> > and non-DRM'd Flash player running.
> >
> > By the way, there IS no "funding from GNU".  In case you hadn't
> > noticed, in this decade the Free Software Foundation doesn't spend
> > its time or money writing software.  It figured out that there were
> > (almost!) enough volunteers doing that -- and that it should focus
> > on policy issues (like DRM and crystal prisons and cloud computing)
> > that threaten to subvert the freedom to write and understand your
> > own code and run it on your own purchased hardware.  The Free
> > Software Foundation has, very infrequently, chipped in some
> > thousands of dollars on specific projects, and gnash got such a
> > donation years ago, but it was something like 1% of the total gnash
> > funding.
> >
> >         John Gilmore
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 2
> > Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2012 11:31:53 -0600
> > From: Rob Savoye <address@hidden>
> > Cc: address@hidden
> > Subject: Re: [Gnash] There is another OSS Flash alternative.
> > Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> >
> > On 11/02/12 11:09, John Gilmore wrote:
> >
> > > The Gnash team spent significant effort toward making gnash work
> > > with AVM2, but AVM2 was very badly documented and we never got it
> > > to initialize a working AVM2 environment.  Then gnash's
> > > traditional funding sources ran out (for unrelated reasons).
> >
> >   I've often considered restarting a significant AVM2
> > implementation for Gnash, but this would be full-time work for many
> > months. To launch such an effort would require stable funding at a
> > level enough that a developer could at least pay their basic bills
> > (mortgage/rent, food). Nobody seems willing to fund such a task,
> > I've talked to most everyone, Google, Mozilla, Canonical, etc...
> > They all prefer users just install the Adobe flash
> > player. :-( Obviously these Open Source companies care little about
> > Free Software.
> >
> >   Note that this task wouldn't be adding AVM2 support to Gnash. It
> > would be a new code base, with as much code refactored from current
> > Gnash as possible. A complete rewrite of Gnash this way could have
> > substantial performance benefits, but as mentioned, this could
> > easily turn into a multi-year task nobody wants to fund. Also after
> > several years of development, Lightspark is still barely able to
> > handle YouTube videos, much less generic flash files.
> >
> >         - rob -
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
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> >
> > End of Gnash Digest, Vol 64, Issue 3
> > ************************************
> >