Lets talk SWF. A lot of people seem to be mentioning Gnash today. Some seem to think it's a giant step for FSF. I think it's really funny. It's really funny (or sad - it depends how you look at it) how a giant win for FSF is taking a wonderful Public Domain project and basically just releasing it under GNU GPL.
So Christian, GNU Flash and Gnash at least were technically two different projects. GNU Flash is (was?) technically GPLFLash2 which is LGPL licensed (how confusing can you get, eh?), while Gnash is using a relicensed Public Domain SWF decoding library making the whole thing GPL. gameswf has been put in the Public Domain so assigning copyrights to FSF and relicensing everything without making any substantial changes is completely legal. In my opinion morally it's not the most wonderful thing one could do though.
Ariya mentions that we could be Arthuring Gnash. Unfortunately, no we really couldn't. Most of the greatness of gameswf, which Gnash is using, is that it implements its own rendering model on top of OpenGL. That rendering model is rather tightly coupled with gameswf (as it's the core of it) so abstracting it would involve refactoring most of the code.
As to whether having SWF support in KDE would be beneficial let me just mention that of course we have it. I did it about two months ago and I have been contemplating putting it along QtSvg but decided that it's pointless (a little bit about reasons later). SWF is very different from SVG though. Yes, they both are technically vector graphics formats, but their usage is completely different. SWF is used to create complete applications. How many applications written in SVG is there?
There's hundreds of different custom installers for SWF files which turn them into .exe files and allow companies to easily deploy those files as standalone apps.
Not having an open library fully implementing SWF is not a problem. FSF created a flawed problem definition. Gnash, in my opinion, is a flawed solution to a self-created problem.
Format is not a problem. People don't care about formats at all. How many people use hex editors to create SWF files? Right, zero. The reason people use SWF is because the creator for them is simply really good. It's very simple and allows them to create compelling GUI's in no time with very little, if at all, programming knowledge. The fact that we don't have an answer to that is the problem. The fact that we don't have anything that could compete with it is exactly the problem. Use of SWF across the web is just a symptom.
And by no means am I implying that creating a SWF editor (e.g. Flash4Linux) would be a solution. It would be a very neat project (like Flash4Linux is) but it is not a solution. The reason is following: when you're competing with a product you have to give people a compelling arguments to switch. Therefore having exactly the same functionality as the application you are competing against is not enough. Why would people switch if they already have everything you provide? Why would they switch if you're implementing just a little more? If you're trying to compete with a product by trying to copy its functionality - you already lost. Furthermore by consistently following vision of another project, you lose your own and you willingly part with the only thing that could make you competitive which is originality.
The way to compete is by going back and asking yourself what was the scope of the problem the original project was trying to solve? What did they manage to solve? What are the main complains of people who are using it? What are people using it for? What are the main features people love about it? If you have those you are well on your way. Next year it's not Macromedia Flash and SWF anymore but Microsoft Expression and XAML, the year after it could be something else. We need to provide a product that stands on its own merits and presents a better solution to the problem of quick and easy creation of easily deployable applications (well, that and stupid little animations 
). Qt Designer or Glade are not enough because they allow very limited artistic freedom and in comparison to what you can do in Flash or Expression apps created in Designer/Glade just look ugly.
I guess now it's obvious why Trolltech will be working on scene graph for the graphical basis of the toolkit.
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Spot On
Therefore having exactly the same functionality as the application you are competing against is not enough.
and
We need to provide a product that stands on its own merits and presents a better solution to the problem
and especially below:
By empowering closed formats we ourselves are giving the power to control the creative future in the hands of the companies controlling those formats.
You are the only person around who I have seen who gets this. SWF tends to get less publicity, but the main one that does the rounds is Open Office and .doc MS Office formats. People whine for 100% compatibility, but of course that just isn't possible, and saving files into a format that you're supposedly trying to get away from is not a terribly great goal for open source developers. Unfortunately, that holds no sway with users - and why should it? What you need is a strategy. You need a foot in the door - and that's what tends to be the big problem initially. In the case of doc files you need a way of getting people to convert to ODF from them so that you ensure good support for your software, but you don't waste all of your time reverse engineering and developing filters for a closed format which may change again tomorrow or it may end up being encrypted in some framework and be just plain irreversible. You also need software that is good enough and compelling enough so that when people switch they don't feel as if they've made a mistake and want to go back.
The massive plus in being able to do the above is that once you gain enough traction then it becomes attractive to ISVs and other developers to produce software and converters to convert people over to your open format and methods, thus accelerating the process even further!
In the case of SWF it is good that we have a foot in the door with some sort of official support for Flash on free platforms (but not for some of their other formats like Shockwave etc). There have also been free implementations of Flash for years, but they've never come to enough where they are an adequate replacement for a Flash plugin in a browser. Of course, this is by no means an ideal situation because you really want to be replacing it with an open alternative, but you need to gain a critical mass for it first so that people actually use it.
In summary, unfortunately Flash is just out there and people expect to be able to use it. Free platforms therefore need support for it in some way. However, should that support come officially or through a free implementation like Gnash, it should never be the long-term solution and there should always be an aim to replace it with something else. If this sounds a bit like the way Microsoft thinks where they allow support for formats like SWF and PDF and then surround them with stuff like XAML and Metro, then you'd be right. The difference is that in the open source world you replace it with something that absolutely everyone can use.
I guess now it's obvious why Trolltech will be working on scene graph for the graphical basis of the toolkit.
Quite right too.
not moral?
Ok, so a code is in the public domain. That means that anyone can get it and incorporate/derive it into proprietary code, without any changes whatsoever. If the code was explicitly released into the public domain, it means that the author is OK with it.
So, how can it be that re-releasing it under the GPL be wrong, since it's far less restrictive than proprietary? In fact, the only thing the GPL restricts is making it proprietary... It's a natural step if you want to make sure that futher modifications you make to the code can't become proprietary.
I just don't get the logic.
never said that
I'm not a big fan of people paraphrasing me because they almost always get it wrong. I never said it's not moral. I said it's not the best way of doing it. It's not the best option because people who created gameswf and people who are still using it will not be able to use any changes from Gnash since they can't relicense GPL to Public Domain. So it's a fork that will never profit the original code.
Actually you did!
Although I agree with your opinion, you actually did say that it's not moral.
Quote:
gameswf has been put in the Public Domain so assigning copyrights to FSF and relicensing everything without making any substantial changes is completely legal. In my opinion morally it's not the most wonderful thing one could do though.
You might want to change that in the article.
Bye, Christian
riiiight....
Might be the language barrier talking here buddy but: "In my opinion morally it's not the most wonderful thing one could do though." doesn't mean it's immoral but that it's not the best thing morally one could do.
Open Source development of SWF alternative
I guess now it's obvious why Trolltech will be working on scene graph for the graphical basis of the toolkit.
I agree with you, but if Trolltech is serious about creating an animations format to compete with SWF, they should foster a community around their project, just like the FSF is fostering a community around Gnash.
There are plenty of developers eager to contribute to an Open Source alternative to Macromedia Flash, and they are not going to wait around two more years for Trolltech to release a functional product under the GPL. Instead, they are going to help out whichever project has the most traction at the moment (be it Gnash, GPL Flash, etc), even if that project is doomed to constantly play catch-up to the closed-source Flash player and the standards dictated by Adobe.
Trolltech should host a public development site (including website, mailinglist, forum, etc) and require all contributors to assign copyright to Trolltech, just like MySQL does. This will ensure Trolltech's ability to dual-license the animations product under the GPL and a proprietary license.
"There are plenty of
"There are plenty of developers eager to contribute to an Open Source alternative to Macromedia Flash"
Isn't this SVG? Trolltech is already supporting Tiny, Gnome, KDE, Firefox are going for the full spec. Seems to be a pretty big community around the alternative already?
I'm not quite sure what
I'm not quite sure what you're up to with a competing product. Ignoring the status quo is possible, but people seem to want Flash, available for the platform they like and open source, instead being bound to Adobe's will and binary. This is what free Flash alternatives try to deliver. Nothing wrong in itself, even though a competing product is always healthy.
Missing the point
You're completely missing the point. It's just like saying that the solution to problem of the DOC format is creating an open source viewer for DOC documents. In fact that would be even more legitimate because unlike Microsoft, Macromedia is proving a flash player for gnu/linux (only for i86 but still). Viewer doesn't solve the problem at all, which is exactly what I'm talking about. The only way of fixing the issue is by giving people application that solves the same problems, but better in an open and standard way so that no one creates SWF's anymore.
I got your point. I just
I got your point. I just don't think it can be the solution to have a competing (even better) product, while users still want to watch these annoying, inaccessible Flash sites. I also don't go over the bridge that no one will use Flash, because of an open and standardized alternative. Speaking of .doc: I'm sure it'll be there for dozens of years, if not forever, despite having a standardized alternative. Influencing the political process with the goal to forbid closed file formats is imho the better way to solve this problem for all future file formats, instead fighting the windmill vanes again and again.