Flex SDK being open sourced
I don’t usually glom onto these news postings, on the theory that you already have plenty of blog sources for this kind of stuff. However, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, so I thought I’d write a little about it.
Today, we announced that we are going to open source the Flex SDK under the Mozilla public license. in my mind, this is just another step in our continued push to open up our platform to make sure that our community can feel confident in building their applications (and in many cases, their businesses!) on top of it.
I’m obviously pretty excited about this, which begs the question: should we have open sourced it earlier? I don’t think so. We have gone through quite a bit of change between Flex 1.0 to where we are now (remember ActionScript 2? remember the old pricing model? remember the huge API shift from 1.5 to 2.0?) and IMHO, it might have been more difficult to make some of the radical changes we did if we were following a completely open process.
Now, the situation is quite different. The Flex community has reached critical mass and is growing daily. The Flex SDK codebase has had most of the rough edges smoothed off of it, and we are at a point where we no longer expect huge API changes in our existing core API. Most importantly, it feels like the right time to invite the community to become part of defining what Flex is.
We are still working out the details, but I think this is pretty exciting. More details can be found here.
Hey Sho, I think your last link is missing the http://
Great stuff, congrats!
Whoops. Thanks, Ryan! Serves me right for posting while watching TV!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
I N S A N E L Y G R E A T ! ! !
In my life I have never, ever seen anything like this. This is H U G E. Amazing!!!
Thank you to you and all the team at Adobe … from top to bottom.
TRULY, NOW FLEX WILL RULE THE WORLD!!!
Also, for others checking this blog entry, there are two videos of interviews with other members of the Flex Team about the open sourcing here:
http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/25/adobe-opensources-flex/
Warmest regards,
g
P.S. Congratulations to you and your wife on your newborn!
Thanks, Greg!
[…] Ted PatrickRyan StewartTed LeungJosh TynjalaJames WardAndrew OliverMark AndersSho Kuwamoto […]
[…] What about how one of Adobe’s own senior engineers feels about Flex going open sourcem, over at Kuwamoto.org? […]
Sounds interesting … more and more companies seem to be moving towards open-sourcing some of their products …
Cheers
Vasudev Ram
Dancing Bison Enterprises
Software consulting and training
www.dancingbison.com
I’m not sure how much of an impact having the SDK as open source will truly affect the front-end community (now our java developers that’s a different story), however what seems to have the biggest impact is the AS3 language construct itself. I’ve poured over nearly every google searm term I could think of, to find out just what was the exact reason for some of the restrictions imposed on us developers migrating from 2 to 3. It’s a benefit to see those who have the biggest influence on the product itself stand up to say why some of the things were done the way they were, however it almost feels like it needs to be done in a more official or public setting since much has been placed on having developer feedback.
Now, if someone could comment on the technical nature of restrictions in method overriding it would at least give some justification of pulling out my hair in being forced to abandon inheritance to be replaced by composition even when the former makes perfect (IS-A) sense, especially in light of not being forced into that foxhole from AS2 (method signature duplication was entirely up to the developer).
[…] Ted PatrickTed Leung Josh Tynjala Robert Scoble (with video)James WardAndrew OliverMark Anders Sho KuwamotoEd BurnetteJay Fortner (Read/WriteWeb) […]
[…] Ryan Stewart Ted Leung Josh Tynjala James Ward Andrew Oliver Mark Anders Sho Kuwamoto […]
[…] Ted Patrick Ted Leung Josh Tynjala Robert Scoble (with video) James Ward Andrew Oliver Mark Anders Sho Kuwamoto Ed Burnette Jay Fortner (Read/WriteWeb) […]