[GRLUG] Adobe, RealNetworks back Linux on MIDs

[John Harig]

Presentations?  Maybe we could have a debate about the
benefits of closed sourced software supporting linux?
;)

I don't see anything inherently bad in it. At least it
shows interest in linux and helps to make linux
products more competitive in the market as well as
generating more corporate interest. 

As long as consumers can choose which programs to
install and uninstall, closed and open source should
be able to  co-exist (as long as you know the security
risks and bug risks).  The problem comes if you "have"
to run it and have no other alternative. 

Yes, Adobe Flash is by no means perfect and it allowed
hackers to win the Pwn to Own challenge: 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080331/bs_nf/59043

I am told that Ubuntu was just as vulnerable by people
who say they know a lot about security. But Microsoft,
for one reason or another, is a popular target for
hackers ;). 

The ideal end of any project is to become "open
source" (and many if not most projects should start
that way from the beginning), closed source isn't
necessarily a bad thing for development:

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/dec/long-live-closed-source-software/

I think specifically using Adobe Flash as a negative
is a bit unfair since Flash is a relatively recent
acquisition of Adobe (they have had only one major
boxed release of it I think?).  

Most of the people who work at Adobe are all about
open source, but they feel they need to develop things
more at their company and of course "the suits" need
to make money.  The main reason given why they never
wrote Photoshop for Linux is that they never felt they
could make money off of it, which may be one reason
why they are going with the web Photoshop project.

I think a better Adobe counterexample is pdf, which
they developed and has been a format used for almost
forever in the linux community, and Adobe has turned
it over to make an ISO standard. 
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7542722606.html

Even before it was submitted to be an ISO standard
there were a great deal of 3rd party apps that you
could use for pdfs:

http://www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf-to-excel/post/pdf-editing-creation-50-open-sourcefree-alternatives-to-adobe-acrobat/

As for RealMedia . . . yeah . . . at least it is a
voice of support for linux, albeit one I don't really
care for.  They don't offer anything usefully
innovative but always becomes a default standard
because they have been around for awhile. When it
started out it was pretty cool (for a closed-source
product) but then it started getting bloated with ads
and killed itself.  I would definitely be happier with
a xiph.org alternative codec (theora).

Even if RealMedia is an impending failure, at least it
promotes more work on linux, and failures can always
teach lessons.

--- Tim Schmidt <timschmidt at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Rich Nagel
> <networkman at triton.net> wrote:
> > Huh?  Why?  I'd think that backing from Adobe &
> RealNetworks would be a GOOD
> >  thing. :/
> >
> >  Please explain.
> 
> Flash and Real's video codec are two of the very few
> pieces of closed
> source software many people still use regularly. 
> Seeing them spread
> is not a good thing.
> 
> A Good ThingTM would be Adobe contributing
> programmer time,
> documentation, or money toward Gnash or swfdec to
> encourage
> interoperability and standards.  I, for one, am not
> excited to see
> closed, buggy, impossible to fix software spread
> onto platforms I have
> a chance of using.
> 
> --tim
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