On last week’s The Browser interview (audio) with Jason Pelletier (jason_pelletier) and me, Jonathan Butler (jonathanpb) asked me for an example of a proprietary framework and I used Adobe Flex as an example. It turns out that the Flex SDK is actually not a proprietary framework and is, in fact, open source. I should have known this since Adobe Flex was the topic of a whole PHP users group meeting awhile back. John Boone (jbgoode12) pointed this out to me in an interesting conversation he and I (BradleyHolt) had on Twitter:
jbgoode12: @jonathanpb @BradleyHolt @jason_pelletier listening to ep 2 of The Browser – also very interesting! One correction: the Flex SDK is open src (view tweet)
jbgoode12: @jason_pelletier @BradleyHolt @jonathanpb It’s true that the Flex IDE costs $$$ but you can create Flash w/open src: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home (view tweet)
BradleyHolt: @jbgoode12 Good point! I guess I was thinking about Adobe Flex Builder. Didn’t meant to pick on Adobe, just one example of proprietary SW. (view tweet)
BradleyHolt: @jbgoode12 Oh, and thanks for listening to the show, glad you’re finding it interesting! (view tweet)
jbgoode12: @BradleyHolt @jason_pelletier It’s like how Micro$oft does it : they have open SDKs but the IDEs are $. FB is based on Eclipse, tho (view tweet)
BradleyHolt: @jbgoode12 Yeah – technically open source but to do anything practical takes lots of work or spending money to make it easier. (view tweet)
BradleyHolt: @jbgoode12 But you’re right, the framework itself (Flex SDK) certainly appears to be open source. I stand corrected 🙂 (view tweet)
jbgoode12: @BradleyHolt It’ll be interesting to see if an ecosystem grows around the Flex SDK, like maybe the relationship between .NET and Mono… (view tweet)
BradleyHolt: @jbgoode12 That will be interesting to watch. The Flash Player is still proprietary (although there are some alts) which could be a problem. (view tweet)
jbgoode12: @BradleyHolt right. and the flash player being proprietary kinda makes the rest moot… plus you can do a lot with frameworks like jquery. (view tweet)
BradleyHolt: @jbgoode12 I love jQuery! Would be cool (but unlikely) if Adobe truly opened up everything Flash related as open source and open standards. (view tweet)
I appreciate John’s correction and love having conversations like the one above. I hope The Browser inspires many more conversations!
