Flash Content & Sys Resources

[Dominic Webb]

Hi Rob/Petter,
	I agree 'theoretically' with the license issues (biz hat on here) the
niceties of having a FLOSS Flash compliant player - my concerns/caveats
which I'm sure, Rob can address, I'll list below.

As I have said funding development is something I'm happy to do.

Our use cases are very education specific (though we are getting more
and more 'ala Youtube' likes cases), and as such I am unsure of how much
of the flash standard "education" makes use of. 

I am going to propose a number of seminar type events that educational
content providers, in the UK (and from abroad but hosted in the UK), can
attend - Richard I'll email you more on this this coming week to see how
we can bring *buntu into this.

Most, UK, educational content providers are providing content in Flash
format (or SCORM files - but still this is, usually, a Flash file(s)
zipped up with an IMS xml file included), so I hope that through the
seminars we can get, at the very least, a rough feel for how they
(commercial/free content providers) are viewing FLASH within their
(commercial) roadmaps - I have no real idea at this point what new
features vendors are looking at using in the coming n'th timescale.

My first proposal is that we should get as many GNU/GPL/gnash Flash devs
to these seminars as possible. This probably will provide, at least, the
'in one place meeting' that Petter suggests. We can facilitate more
meetings and resources after the seminars e.g. meeting rooms, IP
connections etc and we can probably facilitate (an amount of) hotel
rooms as well.

On Mon, 2006-10-23 at 21:08 -0600, Rob Savoye wrote:
> Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> > Yes, I am definitely interested in finding a replacement for the Adobe
> > Flash player and accompanying horrid license.
> >   
>   Yep, and the latest version of the license for Flash 9 on Linux is 
> even worse...
Yes is not the best, but to be honest whatever...

> > I see two obvious ways to fund the development.  Either fund
> > development gatherings, where the active developers get travel and
> > accommodation covered to meet somewhere to talk and code together, or
> > pay one or more of the developers to work on gnash, either to finish
> > some wanted feature, or to just continue doing the great work they are
> > already doing.
Se above comments. We can do this.

> >   
>   Actually we could use a few more experienced C++ developers, funded or 
> not... I recently raised some funding via Bob Young @ Redhat, who wants 
> to use Gnash for Lulu.tv. That was to add a Flash media server (I now 
> have a prototype) to the gnash project so they can stop licensing the 
> Macromedia one for over a million a year... 
Is this like the RED5 project? http://www.osflash.org/red5 . We have
been using this now for a few weeks and seem very impressed. Saved a
bloody fortune on proprietary license fees!

> Btw, the streaming server 
> does now speak Flash's RTMP protocol.... I reverse engineered it.
>   We have talked a bit amongst the Gnash team to maybe do a "Free Flash" 
> conference next year, probably someplace in Europe, since that's where 
> most of the Gnash developers happen to be. (Italy, Denmark, Norway, 
> Nederland, Poland, UK) We could probably use a few more "sponsored" 
> developers, to get up to Flash v9 compatibility, as well as finish the 
> streaming video support I started.
How do you propose we go about getting these 'sponsored' devs? Do you
want OEDP to post some job adverts, facilitate monies, project manage
etc or would you prefer if we just wrote a check to gnash? 

> 
>   So I guess my question is, how serious are you ? :-)
Very. The reliance on one proprietary player to deliver (about) 75% of
commercial educational content is not good, from a risk analysis point
of view. Also while we (OEDP) have no real, current, need to influence
(Flash player) roadmaps, an OS player gives us the option if we need it
in the future, which I can see being a very real case in the next 18/24
months.

> > <URL:http://tech.netscape.com/story/2006/10/03/oreilly-eurooscon-rob-savoye-of-gnash/>.
> >   
>   Oh no, you found my first video interview ever! :-)
> 
>       - rob -
> 

Cheers,
Dom