MESSAGE
| DATE | 2007-04-26 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Adobe's new Free Software Platform
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oftware Applications News
26 April 2007 Adobe Flexes open source muscle
By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service
Adobe will open source its Flex software development kit (SDK) this
year, hoping to draw in Internet developers, and clean up the company's
reputation for proprietary code.
The SDK includes the two developer languages used to write Flex
applications, MXML and ActionScript 3.0; class libraries; components
such as user-interface controls and layout containers; and the code
compiler. Adobe will release all of these elements under the Mozilla
Public License by the end of the year, said Jeff Whatcott, vice president
of product marketing.
The move is part of Adobe's makeover as an ally to the open source
developer community, Whatcott said.
The company hopes this strategy will help Flex become more widely used,
as it is integral to Adobe's strategy to increase its position with
developers in the rapidly growing rich Internet applications market.
Traditionally, Adobe has been seen as a more proprietary niche player
in the digital document-creation and web development tools space. For
example, Adobe's ubiquitous portable document format (PDF), while
available for free, has never been available to the community as a
standard. As part of its more open style, Adobe recently submitted PDF
to the International Organization for Standardization to change that.
Acquiring Macromedia, the original Flex creator, in 2005 helped Adobe
seem more developer-friendly because of that company's Java-based
software portfolio and popularity with web developers. But even then
Adobe acquired a set of proprietary tools such as Flash - on which Flex
is based - and Dreamweaver, which have a loyal following but are not
specifically aimed at pulling in open source loyalists.
Adobe needs the open source community because Microsoft is encroaching
on its territory with its forthcoming Expression toolset and recently
unveiled Silverlight technology. Opening up Flex could help Adobe earn
a critical mass of developers it will need to fend off Microsoft going
forward.
Joe Berkovitz, chief architect with Allurent, a company that has built
software using Flex, said open-sourcing the Flex SDK will serve both
developers and Adobe well.
"[Flex] is a young platform, and because Adobe has had the source exposed
for some time, developers that work closely with it will have a lot of
insight on how to make [Flex] better," Berkovitz said.
Adobe, too, will gain from differentiating itself from Microsoft through
its open source affiliation, he added.
"It takes the comparison between [Microsoft's competing technologies]
WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), Silverlight and Flash/Flex to
a different level," Berkovitz said. "It's not just what features are
best ... but what process are each of the platforms following as they
evolve. A process based on open source is going to be inherently more
powerful and scale better."
The move to open-sourcing the Flex SDK will be a gradual transition,
Whatcott said.
Currently, the SDK is available for free from the Flex developer site,
and developers can modify the source code for any of the elements,
but not submit changes back to other Flex developers.
Beginning in June, developers will be able to view Flex's bugs in a public
bug database and receive fixes for those bugs daily, Whatcott said. They
also will get new code drops every day as Adobe readies the next version
of Flex, which is currently in its alpha stage of development.
Finally, by the end of the year, Adobe will have established on the Flex
website a public central code repository that will allow developers to
contribute changes back to the broader Flex community.
The entire Adobe Flex portfolio includes the SDK, the Flex Builder
development environment and Flex Data Services, J2EE-based technology
that connects the other Flex elements to servers on the back end.
Adobe will continue to sell Flex Builder and Flex Data Services for a
fee and is not open-sourcing those components of the package, Whatcott
said. However, developers don't need Flex Builder to develop Flex-based
applications, he said. They can use any text-editing tool or IDE,
including common Java IDEs and Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net.
-- http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff http://www.nylxs.com -
Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like
Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world -
RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS -
RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers
to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in
our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be
damned.< You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and
technology have been attacted at the hip since the 1st dynasty in
Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
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