> So I’m going to change something. I’m not sure what
> it will be, but it’s equally likely that I continue
> working on Swfdec as it is that I’m gonna do
> something else entirely. We’ll see. If you know
> something You’d like me doing, mail me. :)

Maybe it need some fundings and/or more hackers to keep going. If I could suggest something, annotate the internals of the source code more, to keep your good knowledge of Flash inheritable by later hackers. I might be one, and I hope swfdec could keeping going, even slowly, but better than dead.

Java has always been a popular language, but it was as much hated as it was loved, especially in FOSS communities where the FSFcampaigned from the beginning against it being non free.

Then, some hackers created GCJ and the GNU classpath. That was horrible, worked with very few Java applications, but hey, that was a first step towards freeing Java.

Later, Sun announced they would free totally the JDK, and look at what we have now: a fully functional free JDK (OpenJDK6) that was even certified by Sun.

One could argue that Sun would have freed Java anyway, but when looking at it now, GCJ certainly looks like some kind of a catalyser.

Couldn’t the same happen with Flash ? Couldn’t Swfdec show Adobe that the FOSS community cares about Flash technology and that we have people skilled enough to help them building a free Adobe Flash player ?

Sure, that’s utopic, so what ?

Thanks for what you did, and I sincerely hope you will find a new motivation for going on.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year by the way :)

If we want swfdec matters, we need one thing: swf editing.

It is very similar to svg. Until inkscape didnt get popular nobody really cared about svg. Even the gnome icons was made using adobe illustrator.
Look at it now, almost every illustration on wikipedia was made with inkscape. I think it is a huge achievement.

So we need swdec and inkscape integration to inkscape become a true first-citizen swf editor (with animation).
If it is done, we can easily replace swf with svg because it is the same editor (inkscape), the code are there, just the output differs (which is huge achievement). Even we could edit an swf and convert into svg and develop further.

I think we should focus in this area. What do you think Benjamin?

(I don’t have big hopes that you read this, because it is a bit old blogpost, but I would be very interest what do you think about this subject.)

thanks very much for working on it. i know gnash is still lagging behind :(

I am subscribed to your blog, this is how important I think your project is. :)

For me the most important feature is being able to watch movies, so if swfdec turned out to be a player tat only supported video sites, that would be fine by me. :)

Hope you will keep up the good work one way or the other.

I’ve never installed the closed Flash player under linux, and with swfdec I’ve never bothered with the nuisance of missing plugins for 64bit platforms, like many others did.

So, again, thank you for making me another bit more free!

The FSF’s Flash player project, Gnash, doesn’t even come close to swfdec’s abilities – perhaps you could contact the FSF and see if they’ll sponsor yours instead, or in addition to, Gnash?

If you were looking for donations, I’m sure a bunch of people would help (myself included). Free Flash is incredibly important, and I hope you continue to work on it.

Remember, lots of people read your blog, and use (and appreciate) your software – we just don’t hang out on the IRC channel. :-)