Adobe Drops Licensing Fee’s: Open Screen Project
Adobe the famous owners of PDF, Macromedia suite, Flash and basically everything web design has now dropped their licensing fee’s in a bid to open up Flash to the mobile computing platform. One would assume this means both cellphones and Internet tablets etc…
The Open Screen Initiative AKA the Open Screen Project already has some high level backers including Nokia, Motorola, ARM, Samsung and LG along with Intel and Cisco systems. Also included is content partners such as the BBC, MTV and NBC. Flash by Adobe’s estimates has a install base of 98%, something even that Microsoft would be envious of given it’s 90% install base of all net connected PC’s.
There is also a broader aim with a view to expanding on Adobe’s AIR platform which faces competition from Microsoft’s Silverlight.
However the problem with both these platforms like Flash is that they are proprietary systems with vendor lock-in possibilities.
Back in 2006, Adobe gave the Mozilla Project access to its ActionScript JIT runtime engine (part of the Flash player and consequently part of Firefox 4.0) on the Tamarin Project contributing over 135,000 lines of code to the project itself.
But the only real viable options to keep the platform itself open is both the Gnash and the Prism projects (along with the Mobile project) which would allow for porting of the ActionScript engine itself to the Linux platform along with other open source implementations for local viewing of video files on the Internet on the mobile platform. This would allow for an open platform and would avoid the problem with vendor lock-in with open standards being employed and allowing for a richer user experience without the problem of not being to view the web itself without having some sort of Adobe product installed. Already we have seen open Operating Systems (GNU/Linux), open hardware architectures (the PC) and now we are seeing open mobile platforms (Maemo).
(Via BBC News)
