[Ubuntu-be] Nieuw lid.

[Bram Biesbrouck]

<snip>

> I think I'd like to contradict this, since I do am a (heavy) open-source
>
> > believer. Every since I read Stallman's GNU Philosophy and ESR's
> > Cathedral and the Bazaar (must have been 1999), I truly believe
> > open-source is the right future for any software development. But I guess
> > I'm more of a open source-adept then I'm a free-software one. Differently
> > put, Bruce Perens says
> > more to me then Richard Stallman...
>
> Well here is the point where theory (see above) meets practice. I don't
> want to be rude but I think it's time to give the 'finger' to Macromedia
> (now Acrobat) to their so called web-enhancing products. Flash isn't
> free/open source, that's fine by me. What's not fine with me is that a lot
> of web developers use it to create their websites (sometimes with good
> reasons) and that I cannot seem to be able to view that particular website
> because there isn't a Flash player available for my platform.
>
> My platform (AMD64) isn't exotic, on the contrary, it's going mainstream !
> And even the supported browsers (Firefox) and platforms (32bit) still have
> regular issues.

I know 64bit is coming (I'm sorry, is a fact), and believe me, I am taking it 
into account. Adding 64bit support to ScreenKast and libinstrudeo was the 
first thing I did. But you must admit: using specific 64bit implementations 
(for Linux and others) is still a bit for daredevils these days. You just 
can't expect the whole community to change over in a year (or two).
It's like using Debian unstable and complaining about crashes. Same for IPv6 
that is coming; it will happen, and it will flatten out, but give us 
(developers) some time to dig our way through the major hassles.

> (ex)Macromedia has been promising and promising for new versions of Flash
> player, Shockwave is a real joke (even no player) and 64bit seems to them
> like a Science Fiction movie. They are not delivering !

You're probably right, I don't know much about Adobe's Linux-strategies. The 
only thing I feel is that every company is getting aware of Linux, ever since 
RedHat and Novell started to draw the attention. The only thing they don't 
get is how to *use* the community; they just want to see their number raise.

> How will we ever have a choice on the desktop when a particular feature
> (even a killer feature from some of us) isn't available for it ? How did we
> beat other closed source vendors ? By good competition. Look at Microsoft,
> you might think they are loosing it if you watch their latest strategies.
> All because of good competition.

I agree.

> Now if one uses an alternative to Flash (e.g. ogg/theora) that even might
> not be as mature as the former people _will_ going to use it. By letting
> them use it you give the developers of the FOSS alternative one of the
> greatest contribution they can imagine: users ! In the FOSS development
> eco-system more users means more feature requests, more developer interest
> and pride, more bug reports, ...
>
> This post might sound a little frustrating but it's not nice if you hit a
> website and have to cross your fingers for it to render right. We're in the
> year 2006.

Note that ogg/theora is not an alternative to flash.
It's al alternative to FLV, or the On2 codec in flash8.

Problem is, with browser-plugins, you need the Wintel users too. The market is 
just too diverse to introduce a (perhaps fabulous, I'm not saying anything 
else) plugin or codec that's only backed up by the community.
Currently, there are no _real_ alternatives to what Flash is offering (vector 
rendered browser plugin) in the free-software community. Sure there are 
projects like Gnash (In my opinion, those guys are the closest to the real 
thing), or Mozilla's and Safari's Canvas tag (which rocks !), but let's be 
honest; they're still growing, just like Samba in the early days. I'm not 
saying things can't change (look at Samba now), but it takes a while and we 
need to convince the Wintel-users to get on the bandwagon.

I guess (I've always been into radically new things) Canvas is the next thing 
I will try out. Just the sound of HTML-powered video makes my toes curl ;-). 
Together with AJAX, that gets too much attention if you ask me, it's one of 
the technologies that will leverage thin client browser interfaces into full 
multimedia-powered cross-platform applications. (On second thought, looking 
back into history, who am I kidding?)

> As a last note I want to say that I certainly am not telling you what you
> should use, but you maybe could give alternatives some attention or offer
> them as an alternative on your project.

And that alternative will come, just don't expect it to be there by the end of 
the week.

b.