2008/11/24 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
When the issue came up on foundation-l a little while back, I stated that I thought a flash file that used only the publicly documented subset of flash (or at least works in Gnash) and doesn't use the patented-encumbered codecs would be okay with the board's proposed file format policy.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying - are you saying that if we shipped open Flash code to decode Vorbis that doesn't work on open clients, that would be objectionable? Even if the Vorbis player didn't work in Gnash or it relied on proprietary voodoo in Flash 10, I'm not sure I can see that there is some fundamental problem with sending open code to client-side black box implementations that makes open standards work well on those clients. It doesn't strike me as fundamentally different from supporting, say, proprietary SVG implementations whe available on the client side, or sending code to Internet Explorer to render our web pages correctly. It doesn't exclude anyone or even disincentivize use of open standards.