[Commons-l] How non-free is Flash?

[Andre Engels]

2007/3/6, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
>
> How non-free do we consider Flash to be? The Gnash player appears to
> be making good progress. Would it be acceptable to permit useful Flash
> files which work in Gnash and don't require non-free codecs to be
> uploaded?
>
> I did not see any issues with patents mentioned in the relevant
> Wikipedia article. The old Macromedia Flash website lists a US patent
> on "creating gradient fills", but that seems so bizarre as to pose no
> real threat.
>
> (Let's keep this separate, for now, from the question when a format
> like Flash would be appropriate, content-wise. I'd like to fully
> understand the "freeness" first.)
>

I know too little about the specific case to say something about it, but in
my opinion the following should hold in freedoms:
* one should be free to create material in the format
* one should be free to change and republish what others have made in the
format, provided that other person agrees
* one should be free to build one's own program to show/play/whatever the
format and translate material in the format into other applicable formats
* one should be free to build one's own program to create or edit material
in the format
* the definition of the format should be freely available

Furthermore, there should also be some 'free as in beer' freedoms:
* free players should be available for all three major systems (Windows,
Linux and Mac)
* preferably, all common players and editors for that type of media should
support the format (that is, if Photoshop or GIMP does not support a certain
image format, it might be better to not include it)

Non-freedoms which in my opinion are NOT a reason to reject a format would
be:
* Not being allowed to change or extend the format itself
* Any patents that could not be used to encumber the abovementioned
freedoms, or for which the patent holder has explicitly stated to allow the
abovementioned without restrictions

-- 
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
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