[osflash] SWF9 and FLV File Format Spec released

[Nicolas Cannasse]

Samuel Agesilas a écrit :
> Adobe did not have a choice on that one... they had to add that  
> clause in there in order to keep the Flash Player from getting broken  
> into smaller incompatible players. This way they have a player that  
> is guaranteed to play the SWF file format. Imagine going to one site  
> that uses one type of player to play swf content  then you head to  
> another site that uses another player. Users would be downloading 10   
> different Flash Players just to view content on the web. Not too  
> mention some players would be platform specific leaving other users  
> out in the cold.

This is just completely wrong.

Let's say that another company makes another Flash Player that is not 
compatible. Which user on the planet would ever install it ?? And for 
which reason ?? And which company would ever produce content for it ??

Now let's talk about your "platform specific" sentence. If there is one 
player that is "platform specific", that's the official one. It was only 
supporting Windows and Mac not so long time ago (Linux was wayyy 
behind). Now, Linux support is great but there are still a lot of 
platforms that would need a FlashPlayer.

For example, if a company want to run one of its Flash games on Nintendo 
DS, it would be nice to have a Flash Player here. But they can't write 
one that support only basic features by using the specs. That's just a 
plain limitation of what you can do with your datas.

Let's imagine one second that someone did the same thing with an image 
format : you can produce images with this format but you can't write a 
program that read them. WTF ?? Flash being an artist creation tool, SWF 
format should be free from any stupid restrictions.

The real reason behind that is that Adobe is selling licenses of the 
Player for mobile devices, and they are using this kind of trick to lock 
out another companies that might want to do the same.

That might be also a move to keep the full control of the the SWF 
specification. But if you look at Sun and Java (which specifications are 
entirely open) there are other ways do it in a more open manner.

Anyway, thinking that such restrictions are here to protect the users is 
just thinking the wrong way. I'm surprise to see such thinking on an 
OpenSource mailing list... Restrictions on using your datas will always 
be restrictions. Maybe because of the way you are using your datas, you 
don't care, but others do.

Now, that's a false problem, since from the old times of FP4-5, before 
any spec was released, people have been reverse engineering the SWF 
format in an open maner. Technologies such as MTASC, haXe or our 
Obfuscator have been developed this way, and some unrestricted 
documentations are available on the internet. If I didn't use the time 
to do that, MTASC would simply have never existed !

The only problem it causes is when major features are added (such as 
AVM2 in FP9), it's a lot of work to be able to understand the meaning of 
each byte. But it's just a few weeks of work, and then you're done. 
What's the meaning of leaving such restrictions in that context ?

Nicolas