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Adobe learns lessons of open-source Flex

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 7 comments
The Register; By Gavin Clarke
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Adobe Systems is learning the challenges and complexities of taking its software open source. Just a year and a half after Adobe released its Flex Software Development Kit (SDK) under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) to encourage developer buy in, it's the company - not the community - that continues to shoulder the burden of building and fixing Flex.

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Comments (7)

If they had released it under the GPL......... it might have been a different story.

Why do these companies shy away from the one license that guarantees contributions to the code will flow back into the parent code base. Why is it that these proprietary companies insist that the best Free license is one that almost certainly gives the code away.
Not only that, but Adobe have hardly been friendly to FOSS, to their own customers, or non-Windows platforms. They're heavily into DRM, and they're no good at it-- they're pretty clueless to even wonder why "the community" isn't begging to join their club.
I am not too familiar with this, but have heard from someone who is. It appears to be more a case of "we'd really like for someone to do free programming for us" than "let's put together an open source project as a community". What you say here, "Adobe have hardly been friendly to FOSS" is 100% correct. They have made it clear that they don't need Linux.
Yeah it seems that they way to get contributions to their code is to join with one of the existing projects and help develop that. If they join a community rather than try to start a new one where the they are already not trusted they are less likely to be ignored.
@boomboom: Typical "not-invented-here" syndrome. That said, there's no real FOSS equivalent to Flex that Adobe could have joined. I think the biggest problem is that Flash and the Flex IDE are still cosed source. You need Flash for Flex, so why would a FOSS developer put significant time in Flex?
They could build it with the gnash community so it works well ontop of flash and gnash, and while their at it they could help gnash get up to speed. Then they could drop flash support for linux, just contribute to gnash. They could make a drm plug in for gnash for those who want the drm encumbered stuff.

But I am guess that there is 0 chance that adobe would do anything of the sort.

So I guess when there is no draw for developers to work on a project that there isn't much benefit from working on it.

But I always like working all day for a melted popsicle.
> You need Flash for Flex, so why would a FOSS developer put significant time in Flex?

That's easy. Linux doesn't exist, the only FOSS developers that matter are those using Windows.

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