2007/3/6, Erik Moeller erik@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