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Adobe Donates Flash Code to Mozilla

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

November 7, 2006, 1:30 PM

Adobe announced at the Web 2.0 conference on Tuesday that it was donating the scripting language engine from Flash to the Mozilla Foundation, where it will become an open source project called Tamarin as well as being integrated directly into the Firefox Web browser.

Specifically, Adobe is opening up its ActionScript Virtual Machine, which forms the core of Flash Player version 9. The most recent release in June added improved debugging, faster start times, full runtime error reporting, and better performance.

The code is the largest contribution to Mozilla since the organization was founded in 2003. The basic idea of the effort is to accelerate the development of the standards-based language in order to promote the development of rich Web applications, along with making them run more smoothly in Firefox.

Tamarin will implement ECMAScript Edition 4 (ES4), which provides the basis for JavaScript, Adobe's ActionScript, and Microsoft JScript. That project will then find its way into a future release of SpiderMonkey, the core JavaScript engine in Firefox - although not until the first half of 2008.

"Now web developers have a high-performance, open source virtual machine for building and deploying interactive applications across both Adobe Flash Player and the Firefox web browser. We’re excited about joining the Adobe and Mozilla communities to advance ECMAScript," commented Mozilla Corporation CTO Brendan Eich.

"Adobe is taking a huge step forward in driving standards-based Web development by open source licensing their virtual machine technology," added Jan van den Beld, Secretary General, Ecma International, the European standards body.

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By bourgeoisdude

edited Nov 8, 2006 - 6:54 PM

This is an unusual move by Adobe, is it not?

I mean, who's the winner here? I'm still trying to figure out what Adobe is tying to accomplish by this (as far as benefiting them), and can only reach the one conclusion:

They intend to get as far away from Microsoft as possible.

In recent history, any company who has made that move, in almost all cases has ended up burning for it or nearly destroyed (except for Firefox--ah, see where I'm going with this?). The main question remains then: why compete against Microsoft? And how would this benefit them, as almost all of their products are used mostly in Microsoft environments?

One possible theory (which is really more of a hypothesis) is that by excluding Microsoft and joining/helping the most successful open source org. out there, a new Microsoft could be on the horizen. By assisting a non-Microsoft Adobe could be putting its future into the latest open-source anti-microsoft market smasher.

On the other hand, there are several factors that would tell me this may not be the case too. Among those, the big ones are:

1. Adobe hasn't been known for being able to predict the future market well, so why now?

2. Having just acquired flash player, the financial backing for such a long-term gamble would seem a little untimely.

Still, every business is in it for the money--no matter what they claim. Many non-profit orgs are in it for the influential power, which usually this influential power leads to financial power (and vice versa) as well.

I mean, other than the few applauses here, what does this do for ADOBE? It is obviously good news for Mozilla, but Adobe? They aren't _just_ doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, this is way too big of a deal.

Something is up with Adobe and Mozilla that we aren't being told, people, and I sense it is something huge...perhaps it's--

The anti-Microsoft coalition :D

Score: 0

By bsf

posted Nov 9, 2006 - 3:16 AM

maybe they're bored.
Adobe's software is solid in the market, but they got nothing else to do. Now what.

Score: 0

By dmainzman

posted Nov 8, 2006 - 9:51 AM

What's going to happen to the flash-making application? You know... used to be known as Macromedia Flash MX... now it's known as god knows what?
Yeah... I could care less about how flash is read by your browser.. there's always going to be a plugin of some sort for that, whether Adobe wants one or not. The only thing is, how are all the flash authors out there going to continue making new content? More importantly, how am I going to continue making more content?

Score: 0

By netean

posted Nov 8, 2006 - 4:47 AM

what this could add weight to is the whole "Mozilla as an application platform". YOu can do a lot with XUL but imagine if you can also integrate flash, javascript, XUL, actionscript, SVG, and more. All in a single write once, truly, run anywhere platform. Afterall, Mozilla is available on every platform under the sun!

Score: 0

By Frostek

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 6:30 PM

Credit where credit is due...

Thank you, Adobe. :-)

Score: 0

By TSThomas

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 6:23 PM

Heh, & IBM donated 50000 lines of accessibility code as well.

Score: 0

By Ramhound

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 6:01 PM

As long as they allow us to disable Flash, I will be a fan of this feature.

There is going to be a market to make this new Tamarin project a plugin for IE, interesting how Adobe is opening their market to sell basicly non-official plugins when they don't even sell their own plugins.

Clearly the plugin would be open source, but whom ever does this could introduce their own features. Done the correct way the only open source part would be the flash part.

Score: 0

By Paradise-FH-

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 5:04 PM

so we're creating a localized version of flash for firefox or is this going to work for ie as well?

Score: 0

By Tene

edited Nov 8, 2006 - 4:46 AM

It's not a localised version of flash, it's just a more advanced ECMAscript interpreter.

("Just" not having any negative connotation here, of course)

Score: 0

By GS5

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 4:44 PM

WOW!!! Adobe and donate in the same sentence. I think hell might have frozen over. Isn't competition great, the consumers always wins :-)

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Nov 8, 2006 - 9:07 AM

I think hell might have frozen over.

Nah. Thermo's set to 72. It's quite comfortable, actually.

Score: 0

By id242

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 4:14 PM

bah! When was the last time an application from Adobe was able to open quickly? I guess Mozilla has it's work cut out for them.

I am sure that plenty of people will be happy about more flash advertisements while using Mozilla! (and because of them, possibly slower loading pages)

Score: 0

By ogman

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 3:23 PM

Fantastic!

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 3:01 PM

competition good! ugh ugh (grunt grunt)

Score: 0

By drumcat

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 2:41 PM

What a great hedge against IE destandardization...

Score: 0

By c4p0ne

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 2:31 PM

Nuuiiccee!

Score: 0

By GCoder

posted Nov 7, 2006 - 2:00 PM

Much love to Adobe and Mozilla. A great partnership.

Score: 0

By alexweber15

posted Nov 8, 2006 - 7:09 AM

awesome! :)

i just hope MS doesn't jump on the wagon and start donating code to FF cause they'll just break it ;)

Score: 0

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