Open source developer warns about Adobe…

Ted Leung is an open source developer (he works on Mitch Kapor’s Chandler project) and he warns that Adobe wants to be the Microsoft of the Web with its Apollo and Flex platforms. He doesn’t want to give control of his work to yet another single vendor.
The problem is he admits he doesn’t see much alternative other than hoping that Adobe opens up its platforms.  I actually think that would be very smart of Adobe to do. The revenue for Adobe is in the toolset anyway. Do most people use a free Photoshop competitor like GIMP? No, most of us shell out hundreds of bucks for every version of Photoshop. So, the value here isn’t in the platform (other than the ego and brand building value of owning it) but rather the value is in the toolset that you can build on top of it.

This is actually one thing that developers tell me they like about Sun Microsystems’ direction with Java. By opening that up developers feel better about it as a platform (and can help fix things and improve it).

One thing I thought was missing from the Adobe Engage event earlier this week was an understanding of just how powerful community involvement in a platform could be. None of the apps demonstrated any open source thinking on behalf of the Adobe teams. It sure would be nice for Adobe to think about that. Thanks Ted for bringing that up!

58 thoughts on “Open source developer warns about Adobe…

  1. other than the ego and brand building value of owning it.

    Doesn’t sound like little to me (the brand part lol).

    I read (somewhere) that developers feel that adobe is a cool product, yet they won’t be leaving their current options (say .Net, PHP, and so on) for it. They see it just as an interesting product.

    Just my humble opinion

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  2. other than the ego and brand building value of owning it.

    Doesn’t sound like little to me (the brand part lol).

    I read (somewhere) that developers feel that adobe is a cool product, yet they won’t be leaving their current options (say .Net, PHP, and so on) for it. They see it just as an interesting product.

    Just my humble opinion

    Like

  3. I was involved in the early days of Java Applets and thought they might evolve to be the way that client software was developed. I was wrong. There were a bunch of significant issues. The biggest one was the lack of stable, fast, consistent virtual machines on all the browsers for all the platforms. By controlling the flash player, Adobe can ensure that the bugs are the same bugs on all the implementations as they come from one codebase, and that developers can rely on a particular set of apis to be present in all versions.

    I get your point about community involvement, and I’m not sure if Flex/Flash/Apollo will be a huge success in changing client side software development, but I think that this is not necessarily harmful.

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  4. I was involved in the early days of Java Applets and thought they might evolve to be the way that client software was developed. I was wrong. There were a bunch of significant issues. The biggest one was the lack of stable, fast, consistent virtual machines on all the browsers for all the platforms. By controlling the flash player, Adobe can ensure that the bugs are the same bugs on all the implementations as they come from one codebase, and that developers can rely on a particular set of apis to be present in all versions.

    I get your point about community involvement, and I’m not sure if Flex/Flash/Apollo will be a huge success in changing client side software development, but I think that this is not necessarily harmful.

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  5. Sandy is exactly right. The moment there are forked versions of Flash Player (which would absolutely happen), the peace of mind that comes with developing for it is lost. Do you really trust that some offshoot version of the player will still render your Flash 5 content accurately? I sure don’t, and you only need look at the myriad flavors of Linux to see why.

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  6. Sandy is exactly right. The moment there are forked versions of Flash Player (which would absolutely happen), the peace of mind that comes with developing for it is lost. Do you really trust that some offshoot version of the player will still render your Flash 5 content accurately? I sure don’t, and you only need look at the myriad flavors of Linux to see why.

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  7. I left a comment there two hours ago, but it still hasn’t made it out of the (unadvertised) moderation queue.

    For months I’ve been trying to nail down phrases like “Adobe opens up its platforms” into actual deliverable actions. Robert, what specific action would tell you that “adobe has opened its platforms”… publishing a file format, widening the governance of a file format, always shipping source code with each product, a certification system for all source contributions in every product, something else?

    Some here are talking about desktop apps, some about clientside runtimes, some about specific applications, and it’s difficult for me to find the core change which would satisfy all.

    What exactly are you seeking, when you say “adobe should open further”?

    tx, jd/adobe

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  8. I left a comment there two hours ago, but it still hasn’t made it out of the (unadvertised) moderation queue.

    For months I’ve been trying to nail down phrases like “Adobe opens up its platforms” into actual deliverable actions. Robert, what specific action would tell you that “adobe has opened its platforms”… publishing a file format, widening the governance of a file format, always shipping source code with each product, a certification system for all source contributions in every product, something else?

    Some here are talking about desktop apps, some about clientside runtimes, some about specific applications, and it’s difficult for me to find the core change which would satisfy all.

    What exactly are you seeking, when you say “adobe should open further”?

    tx, jd/adobe

    Like

  9. Do you think the level of control Adobe is going for is really going to acheive that, Sandy? I have my doubts: each implementation of the flash player will have to be different, and that will require careful thought from the point of view of each environment that adobe adapt it for.

    And that’s the problem, really: adobe has been steadily losing its reputation and good feeling from non-windows (yes, I’m talking about apple) users. The fact is, the attempts at converting a lot of the adobe technology out there for apple use have been at a bare minimum for a great many things. Even things like windows keyboard shortcuts (alt-f4, f5 for screen refresh) are used in preference for native apple ones. I’m no longer a regular Linux user, but I can’t imagine the situation there is any better.

    If adobe want to hook cross-platform developers’ interest, they should put a bit of work into regaining trust in these issues, I feel.

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  10. Do you think the level of control Adobe is going for is really going to acheive that, Sandy? I have my doubts: each implementation of the flash player will have to be different, and that will require careful thought from the point of view of each environment that adobe adapt it for.

    And that’s the problem, really: adobe has been steadily losing its reputation and good feeling from non-windows (yes, I’m talking about apple) users. The fact is, the attempts at converting a lot of the adobe technology out there for apple use have been at a bare minimum for a great many things. Even things like windows keyboard shortcuts (alt-f4, f5 for screen refresh) are used in preference for native apple ones. I’m no longer a regular Linux user, but I can’t imagine the situation there is any better.

    If adobe want to hook cross-platform developers’ interest, they should put a bit of work into regaining trust in these issues, I feel.

    Like

  11. All the parts of Apollo are “open” and someone else could create their own Apollo like runtime.
    Remember Apollo is an app built to display/support Flash (SWF), Acrobat (PDF) and HTML (WebKit) content.
    There are currently non-Adobe tools to create SWF, PDF and HTML content.

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  12. All the parts of Apollo are “open” and someone else could create their own Apollo like runtime.
    Remember Apollo is an app built to display/support Flash (SWF), Acrobat (PDF) and HTML (WebKit) content.
    There are currently non-Adobe tools to create SWF, PDF and HTML content.

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  13. I can’t see that this comparison is serious. The Flex SDK can be downloaded for free, and you can develop in notepad or which ever editor is your favourite, as you can download the dotNet CLR and develop C#. Both Microsoft and Adobe will sell you more tools to do the job more quickly and easily. The Open Source Flash community is only a couple of versions behind the latest and even their versions have not caused me a lot of trouble when upgrading. I suppose that I went away from Macromedia when it required the remoting server to do serious jobs, but I think that Adobe will make it cheaper and easier now that IIS7 can stream video out of the box AND give good DRM. Certainly the Actionscript3 has brought me back because of the performance.

    What Adobe don’t have from my perspective is the need to dominate in every area. Why do we need a Microsoft version of every software package out there. Why does Microsoft need to compete with Google, Yahoo, eBay, TV stations. If you think that Adobe isn’t into Open Standards compare them with Bill Gates team. Office 2007 even breaks their own email standards. No, Adobe has a way to go yet before they lose me.

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  14. I can’t see that this comparison is serious. The Flex SDK can be downloaded for free, and you can develop in notepad or which ever editor is your favourite, as you can download the dotNet CLR and develop C#. Both Microsoft and Adobe will sell you more tools to do the job more quickly and easily. The Open Source Flash community is only a couple of versions behind the latest and even their versions have not caused me a lot of trouble when upgrading. I suppose that I went away from Macromedia when it required the remoting server to do serious jobs, but I think that Adobe will make it cheaper and easier now that IIS7 can stream video out of the box AND give good DRM. Certainly the Actionscript3 has brought me back because of the performance.

    What Adobe don’t have from my perspective is the need to dominate in every area. Why do we need a Microsoft version of every software package out there. Why does Microsoft need to compete with Google, Yahoo, eBay, TV stations. If you think that Adobe isn’t into Open Standards compare them with Bill Gates team. Office 2007 even breaks their own email standards. No, Adobe has a way to go yet before they lose me.

    Like

  15. >Do you think the level of control Adobe is going for >is really going to acheive that, Sandy? I have my >doubts: each implementation of the flash player will >have to be different, and that will require careful >thought from the point of view of each environment >that adobe adapt it for.

    You may be right about this. Developing for multiple gui apis is hard. A large amount of the code should be cross platform however. IMO, they have a much better chance of doing it this way then having the code base forked, have microsoft build their own “embraced and extended” version etc. – like happened with java applets.

    >If adobe want to hook cross-platform developers’ >interest, they should put a bit of work into >regaining trust in these issues, I feel.

    I don’t really have an opinion on this. My main thrust was that having multiple versions of the code from multiple vendors won’t help.

    Like

  16. >Do you think the level of control Adobe is going for >is really going to acheive that, Sandy? I have my >doubts: each implementation of the flash player will >have to be different, and that will require careful >thought from the point of view of each environment >that adobe adapt it for.

    You may be right about this. Developing for multiple gui apis is hard. A large amount of the code should be cross platform however. IMO, they have a much better chance of doing it this way then having the code base forked, have microsoft build their own “embraced and extended” version etc. – like happened with java applets.

    >If adobe want to hook cross-platform developers’ >interest, they should put a bit of work into >regaining trust in these issues, I feel.

    I don’t really have an opinion on this. My main thrust was that having multiple versions of the code from multiple vendors won’t help.

    Like

  17. Me too don’t think open source would help in this case. Talking about SUN opening up Java – that didn’t happen for 10 years and not when Java was at its peak. The way i see it, opening up java was more of a revival attempt by SUN.

    An open specification and strict adherence to that are more suited for a platform to succeed than having it as a real ‘open source’.

    I guess a company loses some sense of ownership when they open up some source code. They tend contribute less once they don’t have full control. I don’t think there are any instances of something becoming more successful after they were ‘opened up’. (or Are there?). After all Linux, the flag bearer of open-source is still a distant third among desktop OS-s.

    Then there are some practical issues related to opening up the code. Starting a project as open source is one thing and opening up a project mid-way is a totally different thing. You have to consider things like coding styles, the elegance of code, the comments that are in the code. Basically the entire code base has to be re-formatted/re-factored to make it suitable to be opened up.

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  18. Me too don’t think open source would help in this case. Talking about SUN opening up Java – that didn’t happen for 10 years and not when Java was at its peak. The way i see it, opening up java was more of a revival attempt by SUN.

    An open specification and strict adherence to that are more suited for a platform to succeed than having it as a real ‘open source’.

    I guess a company loses some sense of ownership when they open up some source code. They tend contribute less once they don’t have full control. I don’t think there are any instances of something becoming more successful after they were ‘opened up’. (or Are there?). After all Linux, the flag bearer of open-source is still a distant third among desktop OS-s.

    Then there are some practical issues related to opening up the code. Starting a project as open source is one thing and opening up a project mid-way is a totally different thing. You have to consider things like coding styles, the elegance of code, the comments that are in the code. Basically the entire code base has to be re-formatted/re-factored to make it suitable to be opened up.

    Like

  19. “I don’t really have an opinion on this. My main thrust was that having multiple versions of the code from multiple vendors won’t help”

    yes.
    (At a slightly different level – http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070228-8941.html – one of the major reasons companies like Dell will not move to supported certified Linux hardware is exactly this. So many flavors and desktops have to be accounted for and this is simply a nightmare for the support staff)

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  20. “I don’t really have an opinion on this. My main thrust was that having multiple versions of the code from multiple vendors won’t help”

    yes.
    (At a slightly different level – http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070228-8941.html – one of the major reasons companies like Dell will not move to supported certified Linux hardware is exactly this. So many flavors and desktops have to be accounted for and this is simply a nightmare for the support staff)

    Like

  21. It comes down to exchange and economics and I’ve found the adobe developers a pleasure to work with and adobe is committed to making open standards as much as possible. You can run flex apps on microsoft/mac/linux and the SWF format is pretty accessible. Check out http://www.osflash.org for open source flash projects. Its monstrous how much of a community there is.

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  22. It comes down to exchange and economics and I’ve found the adobe developers a pleasure to work with and adobe is committed to making open standards as much as possible. You can run flex apps on microsoft/mac/linux and the SWF format is pretty accessible. Check out http://www.osflash.org for open source flash projects. Its monstrous how much of a community there is.

    Like

  23. I think the main problem with adobe’s web platforms are the pricing for the data services. If they were to open up the data services then Microsoft would have something to worry about.

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  24. I think the main problem with adobe’s web platforms are the pricing for the data services. If they were to open up the data services then Microsoft would have something to worry about.

    Like

  25. Robert,
    Wish in one hand and crap in the other. Adobe is the last company to open up their platforms. From trying to buy stock,(you have to use their broker) to ripping out components you don’t need with Adobe Reader, to ripping up Homesite and turning it into whatever the hell they call their whizzy buzzy html editor to flash, Microsoft will become an open source company befor Adobe does.

    On a brighter note it was great meeting you yesterday, and have posted my impressions here:
    http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2007/03/social_media_as.html

    Like

  26. Robert,
    Wish in one hand and crap in the other. Adobe is the last company to open up their platforms. From trying to buy stock,(you have to use their broker) to ripping out components you don’t need with Adobe Reader, to ripping up Homesite and turning it into whatever the hell they call their whizzy buzzy html editor to flash, Microsoft will become an open source company befor Adobe does.

    On a brighter note it was great meeting you yesterday, and have posted my impressions here:
    http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2007/03/social_media_as.html

    Like

  27. Very interesting – I’ve been playing with Flex and just recently blogged about how Adobe should open source Flex.

    http://www.j2eegeek.com/blog/2007/03/01/will-or-should-adobe-open-source-flex/

    Adobe seems to be listening. Hopefully they will open up Flex as my sense is open-sourcing the Flex complier, class libraries would ensure the creation of an ecosystem that would encourage wider developer participation. Developers tend to flock toward open technologies and Enterprises like investing in open technologies. Everybody wins

    Like

  28. Very interesting – I’ve been playing with Flex and just recently blogged about how Adobe should open source Flex.

    http://www.j2eegeek.com/blog/2007/03/01/will-or-should-adobe-open-source-flex/

    Adobe seems to be listening. Hopefully they will open up Flex as my sense is open-sourcing the Flex complier, class libraries would ensure the creation of an ecosystem that would encourage wider developer participation. Developers tend to flock toward open technologies and Enterprises like investing in open technologies. Everybody wins

    Like

  29. This is why I’m glad I’m an open source guy. I switched to Linux/BSD this year after years of dealing with crap from proprietary vendors.

    I feel that all software should be written to open standards so that all can participate.

    There should be requirements for web sites such as must be posted using open standards.

    I now refuse to use any software that is not either GPL’d or at least a free/libre license. I believe that software should never cause vendor lock-in.

    I’m thinking about starting my own business soon, and I will use and communicate with software only using open standards, i.e. Open Office, KOffice, and preferably UTF8 plain text.

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  30. This is why I’m glad I’m an open source guy. I switched to Linux/BSD this year after years of dealing with crap from proprietary vendors.

    I feel that all software should be written to open standards so that all can participate.

    There should be requirements for web sites such as must be posted using open standards.

    I now refuse to use any software that is not either GPL’d or at least a free/libre license. I believe that software should never cause vendor lock-in.

    I’m thinking about starting my own business soon, and I will use and communicate with software only using open standards, i.e. Open Office, KOffice, and preferably UTF8 plain text.

    Like

  31. Eyejot uses Flex and we’ve been really happy with it. Adobe smartly selected Eclipse as their editor, so they clearly see value in the open source model. I can also comment on OpenLaszlo. I looked at them for a project last year and came away VERY impressed with everything they had done – and are doing. Both Flex and Lazslo are great platforms for building RIA stuff.

    Personally, I’m fine whichever way Adobe goes with Flex. I really like the fact that Flash and Flex are reliable, powerful, consistent and, in the case of the player, ubiquitous. I’m more than happy paying for their tools because I’m getting quality and consistency. Mind you, that’s not an indictment at all of open source. Just the opposite. I’d love for Flex and Flash to be free and, perhaps, supported by a larger developer network. But, I’m also fine paying for their stuff because I’m getting my moneys worth.

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  32. Eyejot uses Flex and we’ve been really happy with it. Adobe smartly selected Eclipse as their editor, so they clearly see value in the open source model. I can also comment on OpenLaszlo. I looked at them for a project last year and came away VERY impressed with everything they had done – and are doing. Both Flex and Lazslo are great platforms for building RIA stuff.

    Personally, I’m fine whichever way Adobe goes with Flex. I really like the fact that Flash and Flex are reliable, powerful, consistent and, in the case of the player, ubiquitous. I’m more than happy paying for their tools because I’m getting quality and consistency. Mind you, that’s not an indictment at all of open source. Just the opposite. I’d love for Flex and Flash to be free and, perhaps, supported by a larger developer network. But, I’m also fine paying for their stuff because I’m getting my moneys worth.

    Like

  33. re #19: The Adobe donation to the Mozilla Foundation, codenamed Tamarin, was actually for the source code to a high-performance ECMAScript processing engine, used in the current Adobe Flash Player 9 (already on the majority of consumer machines) and for eventual use in future Firefox and other Mozilla projects. ActionScript itself remains an ECMAScript profile with extensions for Flash-specific elements such as media and timing logic. Firefox will still use JavaScript, with its page-based DOM, but the execution speed and scalability promise to speed up substantially in future browser generations.

    btw, I’m sort of disappointed that my original attempt at addressing Robert’s desires, with the “How would you know ‘open’ if you saw it?” at #4, remained unaddressed… leaves me with the feeling that we’re dealing more with a branding issue than anything other people could help improve.

    jd/adobe

    Like

  34. re #19: The Adobe donation to the Mozilla Foundation, codenamed Tamarin, was actually for the source code to a high-performance ECMAScript processing engine, used in the current Adobe Flash Player 9 (already on the majority of consumer machines) and for eventual use in future Firefox and other Mozilla projects. ActionScript itself remains an ECMAScript profile with extensions for Flash-specific elements such as media and timing logic. Firefox will still use JavaScript, with its page-based DOM, but the execution speed and scalability promise to speed up substantially in future browser generations.

    btw, I’m sort of disappointed that my original attempt at addressing Robert’s desires, with the “How would you know ‘open’ if you saw it?” at #4, remained unaddressed… leaves me with the feeling that we’re dealing more with a branding issue than anything other people could help improve.

    jd/adobe

    Like

  35. John: the reason I haven’t answered yet is I want to think about it a little more and not give you an answer developed in between Maryam’s chores or flying around the country.

    How about making it the same as, say, CSS? Giving the control over the core technologies (and, yes, I’d even like to see the source code given over to an organization that’ll oversee the development of such) to a standards body and releasing Adobe control. That way developers would feel the same way about Flash as they do about CSS or Ajax and this argument would go away.

    Now, if you say Adobe has already done that, well, then, we do have a marketing/perception problem.

    Like

  36. John: the reason I haven’t answered yet is I want to think about it a little more and not give you an answer developed in between Maryam’s chores or flying around the country.

    How about making it the same as, say, CSS? Giving the control over the core technologies (and, yes, I’d even like to see the source code given over to an organization that’ll oversee the development of such) to a standards body and releasing Adobe control. That way developers would feel the same way about Flash as they do about CSS or Ajax and this argument would go away.

    Now, if you say Adobe has already done that, well, then, we do have a marketing/perception problem.

    Like

  37. Thanks, Robert… take your time. 😉

    The “CSS-ification of SWF” is one comment I’ve heard from a few people. Inside of Adobe, though, there’s a consensus that the maturity and diversification of PDF is what allowed its future direction to be determined by ISO, and that SWF is not at the same stage yet. (CSS, XHTML, WCAG and others are examples of formats which had difficulty when moving to a very large group of decisionmakers too early.)

    But when you say “source code” I’m wondering whether you’re talking more about the Adobe clientside engines, which implement rendering of such standard file formats, or perhaps some other piece of the code Adobe writes. That’s the stuff I’m trying to nail down, thanks.

    cu, jd

    Like

  38. Thanks, Robert… take your time. 😉

    The “CSS-ification of SWF” is one comment I’ve heard from a few people. Inside of Adobe, though, there’s a consensus that the maturity and diversification of PDF is what allowed its future direction to be determined by ISO, and that SWF is not at the same stage yet. (CSS, XHTML, WCAG and others are examples of formats which had difficulty when moving to a very large group of decisionmakers too early.)

    But when you say “source code” I’m wondering whether you’re talking more about the Adobe clientside engines, which implement rendering of such standard file formats, or perhaps some other piece of the code Adobe writes. That’s the stuff I’m trying to nail down, thanks.

    cu, jd

    Like

  39. In my view there are actually two issues of interest here, and I would like to suggest that the wrong one is being talked (and worried) about. 🙂 There is indeed a question of ‘open source’, but the more important issue–in my opinion–is that of open standards.

    My company has also been working on a desktop application framework–called Sidewinder (screenshots/a>)–and have been doing so for a few years now. To create standalone desktop apps, authors can use either XHTML or JavaScript (the latter being scripts that simply stand on their own). But the approach we’ve taken to giving programmers more power over the OS is to use standards as much as possible.

    For example, to create a system tray message we use the XForms ‘message’ action handler; to save a document to the local file system we use XForms submission; to communicate between different ‘internet applications’ we use DOM 2 Events; to get speech we use XForms messages with CSS. And so on.

    The idea is that in the same way that web pages can invariably run within any browser that conforms to open standards, so too we can create ‘internet applications’ that will run in any ‘desktop framework’ if they too are built using open standards.

    In a sense we’re turning XHTML into a programming language, and as a working name for this, we’ve called it ‘xH’–a profile of XHTML that includes XForms, SVG, RDFa and XBL.

    This language profile comprises a set of XML schemas, built using techniques defined in XHTML Modularisation 1.1. This means that ‘programs’ written with xH can be validated in editors such as oXygen. Although all of the pieces aren’t yet in place, I think that so far at least, the whole concept stands up quite well.

    Which is why I believe that open sourcing Apollo is of less significance than what languages Apollo uses, and in particular how it makes the OS ‘available’ to the programmer; ideally the way to ‘open a new window’ will eventually be the same in Apollo, XUL Runner, Sidewinder…and any other desktop application framework that will almost certainly come along.

    Anyone interested in reading more on this approach might find the following of interest:

    A Standards-based Virtual Machine, a paper I presented at the W3C’s Web Apps workshop, three years ago;
    xH: The new programming language you already know on the formsPlayer site;
    Is it AJAX, Ajax…or XForms?, on my blog.

    Regards,

    Mark

    Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer.com
    http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

    Like

  40. In my view there are actually two issues of interest here, and I would like to suggest that the wrong one is being talked (and worried) about. 🙂 There is indeed a question of ‘open source’, but the more important issue–in my opinion–is that of open standards.

    My company has also been working on a desktop application framework–called Sidewinder (screenshots/a>)–and have been doing so for a few years now. To create standalone desktop apps, authors can use either XHTML or JavaScript (the latter being scripts that simply stand on their own). But the approach we’ve taken to giving programmers more power over the OS is to use standards as much as possible.

    For example, to create a system tray message we use the XForms ‘message’ action handler; to save a document to the local file system we use XForms submission; to communicate between different ‘internet applications’ we use DOM 2 Events; to get speech we use XForms messages with CSS. And so on.

    The idea is that in the same way that web pages can invariably run within any browser that conforms to open standards, so too we can create ‘internet applications’ that will run in any ‘desktop framework’ if they too are built using open standards.

    In a sense we’re turning XHTML into a programming language, and as a working name for this, we’ve called it ‘xH’–a profile of XHTML that includes XForms, SVG, RDFa and XBL.

    This language profile comprises a set of XML schemas, built using techniques defined in XHTML Modularisation 1.1. This means that ‘programs’ written with xH can be validated in editors such as oXygen. Although all of the pieces aren’t yet in place, I think that so far at least, the whole concept stands up quite well.

    Which is why I believe that open sourcing Apollo is of less significance than what languages Apollo uses, and in particular how it makes the OS ‘available’ to the programmer; ideally the way to ‘open a new window’ will eventually be the same in Apollo, XUL Runner, Sidewinder…and any other desktop application framework that will almost certainly come along.

    Anyone interested in reading more on this approach might find the following of interest:

    A Standards-based Virtual Machine, a paper I presented at the W3C’s Web Apps workshop, three years ago;
    xH: The new programming language you already know on the formsPlayer site;
    Is it AJAX, Ajax…or XForms?, on my blog.

    Regards,

    Mark

    Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer.com
    http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

    Like

  41. Some here are talking about desktop apps, some about clientside runtimes, some about specific applications, and it’s difficult for me to find the core change which would satisfy all.

    Like

  42. Some here are talking about desktop apps, some about clientside runtimes, some about specific applications, and it’s difficult for me to find the core change which would satisfy all.

    Like

  43. I think the main problem with adobe’s web platforms are the pricing for the data services. If they were to open up the data services then Microsoft would have something to worry about.

    Like

  44. I think the main problem with adobe’s web platforms are the pricing for the data services. If they were to open up the data services then Microsoft would have something to worry about.

    Like

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