Spark Europe - Aral Balkan
21 11 2005Aral Balkan was his usually energetic self and did a great job representing the open source Flash movement at Spark (along with Nicolas Canasse, John Grden, Luke Hubbard and the rest of the community of course).
His first session was on the “Open Source Flash Revolution”. After briefly covering the history of how osflash.org came about he went on to cover some of the amazing open source projects they host and how to go about creating SWF content without touching the Flash IDE (though you still can if you want to). If you’re handling everything through code (loading external assets etc.) you can use the MTASC compiler, if you want to embed assets into your SWF there is Swfmill to help you accomplish that.
Other things worth mentioning are ASUnit (that does a great job with unit testing for ActionScript projects and integrates with the Flash IDE), Screenweaver for creating desktop applications, screensavers etc. (version 4 will have support for Mac), LuminicBox FlashInspector for logging your application and of course Xray which is indispensable for debugging your Flash projects.
Macromedia appears to be very supportive of the movement, with their own “Flash JavaScript Integration Kit” hosted as an open source project on osflash.org and the extremely liberal licence they’re using for their examples on labs.macromedia.com. They also benefit greatly from the active open source community that is willing to share, and of course its good publicity to slowly try and “re-educate” the flash-bashing slashdot crowd 
As you would expect there were a few reservations though, and as expected the legal situation of some of the projects hosted there was discussed at the open source panel. A few things became apparent from that discussion:
- The open source Flash community does not want to hurt the commercial interest of Macromedia
- Just because no objection was made to certain open source technology before does not mean Macromedia will not take steps to protect its intellectual property later on.
- We need a point of contact at Macromedia to get official feedback on the position they take regarding certain open source developments.
Of course as with any company legal departments are a slow moving machine, as Mike said it is not their intention to spread FUD.
Personally I would love to see some sort of official statement from Macromedia (before everything is handed over to Adobe) that highlights some clear guidelines on what open source developments they accept, maybe even encourage, and to what they take objection.
[...] I read Peter Elst’s blog as he talked about Aral Balkan’s presentation on Spark. So I have one more look on OS Flash projects those Aral recommended. [...]
Hi Peter — thanks for the kind words. I’m really happy that the Open Source Flash movement had such a presence at Spark Europe and I have to thank Stewart and the rest of the Spark team for their support.
As I mentioned at the OSFlash panel too, I see the relationship between the open source community and Macromedia as a symbiotic one. Macromedia has recently positioned Flash as a platform. This means that it is no longer aims to be a single product or a a handful of products by a single company but rather a foundation on which applications, servers, solutions, etc. can be built. Such a move, to be successful, necessarily involves welcoming other products and technologies based on that platform and the protocols of that platform with open arms.
The fact that there is such a large and vibrant open source community for Flash is a primary legitimizing factor for Flash as a platform and it is definitely encouraging that Macromedia has been supportive of the Open Source Flash initiative. However, as I mentioned at the panel, I do not believe that we need any sort of a policy document from Macromedia/Adobe with “guidelines on what open source developments they accept”. The open source community is not a group of non-paid Macromedia/Adobe developers. They are, for the most part, comprised of Macromedia/Abobe customers who are passionate about the Flash Platform, passionate about Rich Internet Applications, Internet games and the potential of the web and, furthermore, have ideas that they want to realize and tools they want to build to help them (and others) realize these ideas.
The OSFlash community is comprised of key figures in the Flash community and we love the Flash Platform, but Macromedia/Adobe does not dictate our policy and nor is that something that we require or desire.
I was somewhat disappointed that so much of the panel was taken up with this discussion so I won’t go on for too long here. Suffice it to say that Open Source is a Good Thing ™ for the Flash Platform and, if Macromedia/Adobe is serious about Flash being a “platform”, I don’t think that these mundane issues will be discussed for much longer as we all move on to making kick-ass tools while shaping the future of the Internet as an application platform. As Nicolas mentioned at the panel, the important thing here is not the lose the long-term relevance of Flash in Web 2.0 because we maintain too short-sighted a view on immediate-term profits.
For an example of a platform that already has legitimacy, I would encourage you to look at Java. There are many parrallels between Java and Flash, so a good reference would be the relationship that Sun has with its developer base and open source community.
you make some good points there Aral, and I’d like to agree that we don’t need to have Macromedia/Adobe dictate the way open source Flash moves forward but this is a legitimate concern many people have.
For example, I believe the reason we didn’t see an open source alternative to a FlashComm server emerge earlier is not the lack of interest or skills in the community but more the fear of being sued down the line.
There is the example of open source Flash Remoting for PHP which was embraced by Macromedia (no doubt because they had no plans for porting it to PHP themselves) but as Mike said in the panel that does not mean they are happy with everything that is coming out of the open source Flash community.
Don’t get me wrong I’m all for an independent open source Flash community but if we want to continue to ‘play nice’ with Macromedia/Adobe and respect their intellectual property (whether or not protocols should be allowed to be patented is a whole different discussion) and move forward without ‘fear of retribution’ I think we need some sort of official recognition from the mothership about the position of open source in relation to their commercial interest.
Nice post and good comments. I just want to make clear that Macromedia is not trying to decide what projects are worked on in the open source community. That is for the open source community to decide.
However, we may like some projects more than others, or dislike some projects more that others (which should be expected), and we may let people know our views on those projects (as a participant in the open source Flash community). But again, it is up to the open source community to decide what projects they focus on.
Finally, and this point is not really related specifically to open source, but if Macromedia feels that any company or group is violating or appropriating our intellectual property, then we of course reserve the right to pursue that. But again, that applies to any group / company, and is in no way specific to open source.
Btw, Aral, thanks for moderating the round table the other day. While the discussion did get a little warm at times, you did a good job of directing it, and keeping it moving forward.
mike chambers
mesh@macromedia.com
Yes, thanks Aral - you’ve done a great work in bring the OSFlash community together. I think saw a true turning point for OSFlash during Spark and it was especially apparent at the dinner on Thursday night - wow what a group we had (some 30+ flasher’s!)
It was such a great experience, we all just stayed a while and enjoyed the moment (missing the Remix session)! One couldn’t help but to see that something had just come to life at much greater level than a wiki and email list.
Now finaly, and this was something I was trying to convey at the OSFlash panel, we’re making sure people understand our intentions. There seems to be this mythical association with linux/windows battle. Given that people have this as their only probable reference, I can understand why they’d wonder where are loyalties are. While I’m not the official spokesmen for OSFlash, I can certainly say that they would agree with Red5’s position: We are, and always have been, working for a completely harmonious relationship with MM. I know Red5 is controversial (can you restrict a protocol?) and I would reitterate that we’ve acted with responsibility when creating Red5 and done nothing illegal that we’re aware of. In saying that, we realize that MM has the right to protect themselves and Red5 will work with MM to resolve any and all issues they might have with us specifically.
We, of course, hope they see the enormous value that Red5 would bring to the Flash platform and development community. Not to mention the complete impact it would have on 3rd world, non-profit, educational and medical groups.
And lastly, I’d like to echo Peter’s call. We need an entry point to MM to work with them on OSFlash projects as well as an official stance on Open Source. These 2 things came into sharp focus during the panel discussion.
Anyway, thanks for this blog entry Peter, it was great meeting you at Spark!