On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:10 PM, ChrisiPK chrisipk@gmail.com wrote:
If our images can be viewed under Linux even though we know 90% of users will in fact be viewing them with Windows, nobody has had any moral issues that I know of. Free software/knowledge/images are free, because it is allowed to use them virtually everywhere (and not like big software companies restricting it to work only with some special player software). Why should we force people to use free software?
We shouldn't, obviously. I don't think anyone here has argued that we should.
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.
So I think David's open ended question is unanswerable. We need to know "For what?" and "How?".
This is the historical high level four fold set of issues with flash:
(1) Flash is executable software. We do not allow executable *content* uploads for a multitude of reasons which are not specific to flash. (Security concerns, the impossibility of validating what non-trivial executable code really does, etc) But trusted executable things might still be useful as wikimedia-provided tools. (we do this with Java for Video today)
(2) The Flash format has (historically) been secret and there has been no freely licensed implementation. Adobe has released some specs although many things are still not disclosed. GNASH is able to run some older flash code. Only a subset of flash can be run on free software systems.
(3) Flash video and audio have been some of the most frequently desired features, but these have *required* the use of patent covered formats. Users can not legally play these formats without licensed decoders, and more importantly other publishers can not use them without paying royalties. We could pay up the licensing offer users a choice of formats, but other publishers wouldn't have the same freedoms. GNASH does nothing to help this problem.
(4) No free software flash authoring tools, if anyone who wants to create or edit flash would need to purchase the expensive editing tools.
Currently these issues have the following answers:
(1) Isn't relevant for things like uploader widgets, player widgets, or shims to give IE equivalents to more modern HTML features.
(2) Is still somewhat problematic. Adobe is still churning out undocumented OPcodes in flash, but if you demonstrate that something operates in Gnash thats probably pretty good.
(3) Is now potentially avoidable because Flash 10 is a powerful enough programming language to send clients decoders written for the flash vm for non-patented formats. All publishers have this option. Using the non-free formats would still be unacceptable since it would be taking a liberty that downstream republishers would lack. There now exists a drop in flash based HTML5 <audio/> replacement for Vorbis decoding. No one has done video yet, though it's clearly possible now. Performance for video accomplished in this manner is still an open question.
(4) Is a problem for many things but for things like uploader widgets, players, and compatibility shims they would most likely be created with haXe (A free software language for targeting the flash virtual machine http://haxe.org/), and while author-ability/editability is a deal-breaker for *content*, it's likely less important for non-content website machinery. Limiting the developer pool is a serious practical issue, but haXe addresses that.