Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 10:01:07 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: admin@cpcnw.co.uk Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Flash viewer for FBSD Message-ID: <20100306100107.076b65be.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <a9bdd460c08aefdfff88721137f44e87.squirrel@webmail.plus.net> References: <20100305120021.52F79106566B@hub.freebsd.org> <b6c669b044c35b74e4d1d74a493106fb.squirrel@webmail.plus.net> <20100306044916.ce02523e.freebsd@edvax.de> <a9bdd460c08aefdfff88721137f44e87.squirrel@webmail.plus.net>
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On Sat, 6 Mar 2010 08:46:16 -0000, "Graham Bentley" <admin@cpcnw.co.uk> wrote: > Points very well made. In fact shouldn't we be campaigning against > such closed source perversion of our Open Standards Internet, not > complaining that one company doesn't make a media content viewer > for us? In fact, if Adobe wishes NOT to provide a "Flash" product for the FreeBSD platform, it absolute is their right to do so. They control the format (that's why I woulnd't call "Flash" a standard, or an open product). On the other hand, Adobe's product is so popular because of its usage. They made successful marketing so that content providers came to the tought: "This is a good product, and I need it.", no matter if this really was the case. Please don't get me wrong: I don't see anything particularly bad in "Flash" itself, it is a quite closed product, as many others. There may even be places where it is useful, but as you will agree, animated buttons to navigate the content within a web page is *not* such place. The right that I admitted Adobe to have - to exclude me from using their techology - continues to the right of the web developer to provide content that is only viewable on an arbitrary subset of existing OS platforms. Let me come back to my stupid "JPG image viewer plugin". Why is "Flash" so complicated? Why does a plugin that does so very little (measured in how it is actually used, as I said, for displaying video or animating buttons) seem to hook into the system and even its kernel so deeply that it's really hard work to make it run on an "unsupported" platform? Imagine that JPG images could only be viewed on x86-64 with 2.5GHz and more. That would be idiotic. And of course, there's always the race after the most recent version of the JPG plugin, because every year there will be a new, incompatible format. But because "Flash" is considered "modern technology", it is heavily employed to create the stuff that is consumed on the Internet most: Games (and the thing with P and three further letters). And within a free and environment such as the Internet, that what is required by the masses will be produced, even if the masses wish to stick with proprietary and dangerous stuff. > This is exactly why Stallman harks on about freedoms etc it almost > feels pathetic; "Please Mr Adobe, we poor FreeBSD users don't have > a flash viewer, please make one for us too" bleat bleat If they don't want to make one, there's no way to convince them. Since the majority of free and standardized operating systems isn't oriented at market share, there is no reason for Adobe to follow a crying "Please!" :-) > The only content I 'miss' is occasional utube vids ; > No probs. Download as .flv and play with mplayer. That's right - and works perfectly. Even for stand-alone "Flash" games, there's the swfplayer program. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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