Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 7th Nov 2006 21:15 UTC, submitted by JrezIN
Mozilla & Gecko clones "Today Adobe announced that the EMCAScript 4 compatible virtual machine in the Adobe Flash Player has been contributed to the Mozilla project under the name Tamarin. It is the single largest contribution to Mozilla since its inception and consist of about 135000 lines of source code. The engine is fully open source using the standard Mozilla license, with the Mozilla foundation retaining full ownership."
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Oww that gotta hurt...
by devnull on Tue 7th Nov 2006 22:06 UTC
devnull
Member since:
2005-07-06

Windows with all its security and virus problems and now the problems with IE7, see security bulletins, being just as unsecure as IE5/6.

Adobe is a very keen company..its time to start porting InDesign and Photoshop to Linux/BSD, no need for the source just a working native program, i am willing to pay for them. Go Adobe!

Reply Score: 1

Great
by hraq on Tue 7th Nov 2006 22:19 UTC
hraq
Member since:
2005-07-06

This is great for linux.
finally i was able to install flash player from within firefox 2.0.
I wish to be able to install flash 9 though.

Thanks for Adobe contribution and we look forward more contributions to improve open source software.

Reply Score: 2

RE: Great
by Livid on Tue 7th Nov 2006 22:37 UTC in reply to "Great"
Livid Member since:
2006-11-07

You can install Flash Player 9 for your Mozilla Firefox 2.0 under Linux.

Flash Player 9 for Linux is available as a beta download in http://labs.adobe.com , enjoy!

Reply Score: 5

Uhm..
by Myrd on Tue 7th Nov 2006 22:33 UTC
Myrd
Member since:
2006-01-05

I believe they mean ECMAScript. Not EMCAScript.

This is the standardized scripting language which corresponds to JavaScript and ActionScript.

So the question is, how does this VM compare to the Gecko engine's current JavaScript implementation in terms of performance, memory footprint, etc?

Reply Score: 4

RE: Uhm..
by robilad on Tue 7th Nov 2006 22:54 UTC in reply to "Uhm.."
robilad Member since:
2006-01-02

It's faster, thanks to the jit, and smaller, thanks to the gc.

Reply Score: 5

v Great!!
by latte on Tue 7th Nov 2006 22:56 UTC
RE: Great!!
by kajaman on Thu 9th Nov 2006 08:46 UTC in reply to "Great!! "
kajaman Member since:
2006-01-06

> Unlike (cough) Novell (cough) MS....

Novell contributed _much_ more code to OSS. You're not fair! Don't remember that this doesn't mean that flash became open source software or they make a first step for making it such. No chance for oss flash from Adobe IMHO.

Reply Score: 1

It´s a jit for a dynamic language
by jgfenix on Wed 8th Nov 2006 01:41 UTC
jgfenix
Member since:
2006-05-25

So perhaps it could be adapted for Python or Ruby. Now we can wait until someone put it in the Computer Language Shoutout

Reply Score: 1

smitty Member since:
2005-10-13

Actually, I think they're already working on making Python an alternative to Javascript in Mozilla.

Reply Score: 3

frik85
Member since:
2006-01-26

Mozilla Public License alone would be very bad for open source projects. http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/

SpiderMonkey is licensed under MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1 (all 3 over the whole code), the developer can choose which license the use.
If Mozilla now would choose to replace parts with MPL-only code, it would eliminate the usage of SpiderMonkey in GPL- and LGPL-projects !!!
... and remember it's not just about SpiderMonkey, but also about Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. ... all use the SpiderMonkey-Javascript Engine and all are licensed under MPL, GPL and LGPL!

Let's hope that Mozilla.org/.com team is not as stupid and act like this. Make sure the whole code is compatible with GPL/LGPL as well!
... if not, more mozilla forks may happen, Debian already has started, more may follow.
It would be better to rethink what MPL-only code can cause.

Remember that the Flash Action-/Javascript engine has been forked of the Netscape/Mozilla Javascript Engine (now called "SpiderMonkey") a few years ago. Macromedia mention this in their help-documentation (up-to Flash MX (aka 6)). Now as Abobe owns Flash, the web-based information has been removed (but still access-able with archive.org).
So Adobe, please release the code as MPL, GPL and LGPL licensed or keep your code, as it would hurt more then help, in a broader term of view.

It's like if Apple would give their webkit (KHTML fork) back to KDE devs, which would drop KHTML instead and use Apples own license (+ additionally GPL). (... that's just for illustration purpose)

Edited 2006-11-08 07:40

Reply Score: 2

smitty Member since:
2005-10-13

Calm down frik85, if you bothered to look it up you would have seen that the code is under the same tri-license that the rest of Mozilla's code is under. MPL/GPL/LGPL. Otherwise you are right, they would have to change their license policy for Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. and that is not going to happen.

Reply Score: 2

frik85 Member since:
2006-01-26

My worry about the license was justified. Thanks for the information.

I have read the OSNews.com, kaourantin.net and adobe.com news article about that topic and all mention only MPL ... that's why I wrote my first comment.

Although mozilla.org wrote:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/

"The Tamarin source code is available via CVS at mozilla/js/tamarin/. This code is licensed under the same Mozilla tri-license (MPL/GPL/LGPL) as other Mozilla code." [Last modified November 7, 2006]

So, if this information still apply, then the whole deal (Mozilla-Adobe) is okay.
There won't be license problems then.

Reply Score: 2

elsewhere Member since:
2005-07-13

It's like if Apple would give their webkit (KHTML fork) back to KDE devs, which would drop KHTML instead and use Apples own license (+ additionally GPL). (... that's just for illustration purpose)

Huh? KHTML is LGPL, Apple can't change that to their own license, which is why Webkit is LGPL and available for anyone to download. The only issue with KDE is that they're butting heads with the Apple devs and their agenda on Webkit development, but there are KDE devs right now submitting code and patches to Apple for Webkit. The only debate over whether or not to go with Webkit in KDE is whether the KDE should be at Apple's whim for project development timelines and risk having to fork, or just stick with KHTML and backporting changes where applicable.

Interestingly, at least in the context of this article to keep it relevant, Adobe is using Webkit HTML and Javascript for their upcoming Apollo project, so they'll be contributing as well.

Reply Score: 1