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Re: XML, Rich Internet Apps

• To: "" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: XML, Rich Internet Apps
• From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
• Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 13:20:09 -0800
• In-reply-to: <oprgbyglqsezizxn@localhost>
• References: <oprgbyglqsezizxn@localhost> <20021123184815.99195.qmail@w...>

Mike Champion wrote:
>
> Given that Macromedia (unlike, ahem, others that come to mind) don't seem
> to want to use their monopoly in one area to drag us kicking and screaming
> into their future monopolies in other areas, what besides the "political
> and religious" objections are there to using Flash for rich internet apps?


Does wanting to own your own data count as a political/religious
objection?

An annotation in the article [1] states that "Macromedia's
SWF file format is freely documented", but reading the
actual license [2] we find that:

| Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you
| are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification
| for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF.
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^                             ^^^^^^

So if you want to write a Product that *reads* SWF --
say a player, a tool to convert your old SWF files
to some other format, to search and index them,
or anything else you might want to do with your data --
you have to reverse-engineer the format.

No thanks.

I don't have any strong objections to proprietary software,
but proprietary file formats are another matter altogether.



[1] http://www.oreilly.com/editors/
[2] http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/licensing/fileformat/license2.html

--Joe English

  jenglish@f...

• References:
  • Re: XML, Rich Internet Apps
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • Re: XML, Rich Internet Apps
    • From: "m a r l o n . n e l s o n" <thesardonicwon@y...>

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