interesting article re. flash & video on the interwebs

[Dellboy]

interesting article re. flash & video on the interwebs

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=292

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Interesting article but hardly new.

The death of Flash has already passed critical mass, it will take years for it to be totally eradicated but thankfully there is nothing Adobe can do now to save it and I have absolutely zero sympathy for them. They are one of the few companies that provoke as much outrage in me as Apple.

The internet was built on open standards and Adobe failed miserably in trying to close them (Cold Fusion, Flex, AIR all dead or dying).

For proof of what's to come check this out
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/
All done using OPEN standards and no plugins. HTML5 & javascript only...

 

[Dellboy]

Yo, everything said agreed upon. I can understand why you hate apple etc.etc. But aren't you a .NET developer?, that's hardly an open standard. Not trying to be smart at all. Just an observation. I'm open to correction (as always)

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

I develop in .NET yes (wouldn't really class myself as a .NET developer though) but it is the definition of an open standard. The CLR is completely open and anyone can develop their own languages to sit on on it (Iron Python & Iron Ruby are two outstanding examples of this). Also, look at all the help they gave to Mono/Moonlight (almost feature complete implementations of .NET/Silverlight on *nix) - Miquel didn't pull that one off on his own.

The .NET runtime itself (on windows) is closed yes, but the entire .NET BCL (Base Class Library) is open source, as is the MVC framework. Microsoft are not the company they were 5 years ago. Much as I despise him, Ballmer has done quite lot to open up stuff since he took the reigns. Just have a look at the millions of lines of code published by them on codeplex..

 

[Dellboy]

I think Microsoft tried just as hard as anyone to 'close' things up to their own advantage. They just weren't very good at it. Google set the blueprint for a successful 'open' web business, although even that's debateable, they're still leading the field in that respect. Microsoft saw this and realised that they had to change direction or they would be toast. IBM is an example of another company which went through this paradigm shift.

In terms of the runtime being closed... isn't that kind of essential to .NET development?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

In terms of the runtime being closed... isn't that kind of essential to .NET development?

Well, no. It's closed source (which is of no consequence to development really unless there are bugs in the runtime which there tend not to be) but is an open specification. There is absolutely nothing to stop anyone from developing their own runtimes should they wish (as Mono have done quite successfully).

I'm not such a huge open source fanboi, while it's nice, I don't agree that everything in the world must be open source. Open standards, now that's something different..

And, until Google open their adsense, page rank & search algorithms, they have hardly "set the blueprint for a successful 'open' web business". Nothing that Google actually make money on is open (source or standard...).

 

[Dellboy]

sorry, was referring to the fact that all their software is free to use... see my qualifier that the fact that they are open is debateable...

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

sorry, was referring to the fact that all their software is free to use... see my qualifier that the fact that they are open is debateable...

Sorry, I thought the conversation was about openness, not cost. Different argument entirely. Visual Studio is free for non-commercial development if that swings you?

And, in fairness, the only reason they do that is because they can and it pisses off Microsoft.

 

[Dellboy]

Sorry, I thought the conversation was about openness, not cost. Different argument entirely. Visual Studio is free for non-commercial development if that swings you?

And, in fairness, the only reason they do that is because they can and it pisses off Microsoft.

that doesn't swing me at all... I'm very satisfied with Rails development, that's good enough reason for me to stay with that...

I don't doubt the motivations behind google at all, Like every large corporation they have but one aim: to make money by whatever means necessary to satisfy shareholders ... it's a sad fact of life

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

I'm very satisfied with Rails development, that's good enough reason for me to stay with that...

Wait until you have to scale a site to more than 5 users

I'll get my coat..