Re: [tlug] about flash for linux

[Matt Gushee <mgushee@example.com>]

On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 10:56:22AM +0200, Pietro Zuco wrote:
> 
> Just browsing the net I found a lot of pages about Linux that has some 
> flash videos. So I thought that "If I have a page about Linux I would like 
> to develop it completely under Linux", thus I look for a flash development 
> suite or some simple flash editor, but I didn't find any.
> Maybe I was bad googling... Someone know about some way to develop flash 
> videos under Linux?

Well, if you can wait a few months :-), I will likely be developing a
product for generating Flash. Then again, you would probably like it to
be open source. My product, if I create it, will probably be proprietary.

I can't say for sure you won't find anything, but I am a bit doubtful.
The reason is that, though Macromedia's spin says that Flash is an "open
specification," that doesn't mean what most of us would expect it to
mean. It's true that more-or-less any developer can obtain the Flash
spec free of charge, but in order to get it you have to sign a big nasty
license agreement.

Now, I haven't been over that license with a lawyer yet, but it makes
the developer accountable to Macromedia for product quality and various
other things, and my impression is that it would be very hard if not
impossible to reconcile those license requirements with an open source
development process. So if I'm right about that, it's unlikely there
will be any open source Flash development tools in the foreseeable
future.

Then again, I could be wrong. For your sake I hope I am.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA    Horses bear manure through
mgushee@example.com           its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/   When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)