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Getting Flash on such a small market requires hundrends of thousands of dollars of pay to Adobe to do the port. Magnusoft doesn't have that kind of money to pay for just 1 part of the OS only. Same goes for official ati/nvidia 3D support. These require money because special agreements must be in place, because the market is so small for Zeta that these companies don't have an incentive to do their ports out of their own pockets.

So, please get real when you request features. Request a port of the open source BlueZ stack for example, or a SIP client. These are more doable.

"hmm seems that its just the update cd that costs 29, they keep milking its users the yT way..."

How dare they ask for money to pay their employees...

How dare they ask for money to pay their employees... --stew

You mean, 'how dare they ask for money to sell something their license to sell is still unclear on....'

I fixed it for you!

--bornagainpenguin

Actually, it won't. Flash is an extremely complex and close-architecture piece of software. Gnash, at best, will be like WINE is today: unstable and not fully compatible.

But the main problem is the LICENSE of the Flash creation application. Each flash animation created with Macromedia's application can only be legally viewed by Macromedia's players only. Gnash does not have the legal right to render these animation that the web is full of today.

So, GNU must also create a Creation application, not just a Player. And this is such a daunting task, that in my mind, even taking database space talking about this issue over here, is useless. It will never happen, not realistically-enough for most PC users at least.

Being I don't have any adobe/macromedia flash creation tools to verify that assertion, it does beg an interesting question. Just because the content creator accepted such a license, why would the person who views that content be held to the same license agreement? If there is a stop gap solution that allows me to view flash media on an unsupported platform, I don't give a rats ass what agreement the creator of said content entered into.

Taken further, why would the GNASH people need to create Flash creation tools to satisfy a license they aren't bound to. They could take the same road the Kaffe/GNU Classpath people did and say it's purely academic and not intended to be a replacement technology. Maybe Magnussoft should throw some cash at the GNASH developers instead of at the adobe lawyers. Just thought.

Is such a license actually enforceable?

BTW, the Mozilla Foundation seems to be interested in being able to bundle Gnash:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash/2006-01/msg00197.html

> Is such a license actually enforceable?

no

> BTW, the Mozilla Foundation seems to be interested in
> being able to bundle Gnash:

They wussed out and are now looking at bundling the recently opensourced Adobe flash-9-only player with mozilla instead. Puuuuuuu

Is there an open-source flash9-player from Adobe around? Where?

"Gnash does not have the legal right to render these animation that the web is full of today."

Just because it's in a license doesn't mean it's actually legally valid. I'm fairly certain that in most countries Adobe/Macromedia have no legal right to tell content creators how their work can be viewed. It's like if Sony said movies made in their digital cameras cant be viewed in non-Sony gear.
Now, there might be other issues, such as patents and reverse engineering, but restrictions on viewing and rendering in and of itself is most certainly not legally enforcable. Adobe/Macromedia does not own the content I have created and they have no legal jurisdiction over it.

There are already dozens of ways to create swf files without using Macromedia/Adobe products, so that's not a problem. Please check out http://www.osflash.org for more information.

Also, I'd like to see a link to some information on that restriction that you claim is placed on swf files. I simply can't believe that such a restriction exists.

I love seeing all the "updated from Haiku" and "added fix from Haiku" in the notes from magnussoft!

Yes, Bernd and the Haiku guys are really working together at the moment, you can see it in the mailing list where they have various discussions and post new pieces of code to test.

Really good, mutual benefit, you name it.

I understand the need to release new versions of Zeta to retain interest, but it just doesn't seem like there is truly enough in that list for a "1.5" - many items listed are mainly bugfixes and updates..

You do not seem to understand how big an update multiuser is. BeOS is a single-user OS, and making the OS multiuser is a HUGE undertaking. I'd say it warrants a 2.0 designation even.

Edited 2006-11-08 08:31

Has Bernd paid you off Thom?

As far as I see, they've taken open source code, made changes, offered binaries for testing, with a possible contribution in the future. Maybe that happens after ZETA is released, just to make sure they get some more seats...

If Bernd and ZETA want to really work with Haiku, they might want to work from the same repo for their shared code.

Beta wrote:
-"As far as I see, they've taken open source code, made changes, offered binaries for testing, with a possible contribution in the future. Maybe that happens after ZETA is released, just to make sure they get some more seats.."

well, that's perfectly fine with the MIT licence since it allows reuse as propriety software. and the Haiku project picked that licence, so I doubt they are upset.

since Magnussoft doesn't have to contribute back, I'm just glad if they do. particularly since I believe that later when Haiku has become stable and somewhat mature, and if Magnussoft Zeta is still around, they will base Zeta on Haiku rather than r5/dano. if this happens, my hopes are that Haiku and Zeta devs will have established a good dialogue and code exchange. worst case scenario would be that Magnussoft adopts and enhances Haiku, while not contributing any of those enhancements back.

I have absolutely no problem with them not doing so!

I have a problem with people claiming they are doing more than they are, when they haven't, at all, contributed back.

When code appears in the repo, i'll praise them, but not before. This has happened before with yT, as a cheap marketing/PR ploy.

You do not seem to understand how big an update multiuser is. BeOS is a single-user OS, and making the OS multiuser is a HUGE undertaking. I'd say it warrants a 2.0 designation even.

While its a big change and probably would warrant a 2.0 version #, BeOS had the beginnings of multiuserness already in it. Just wasnt used iirc.

I hope it works well.

While its a big change and probably would warrant a 2.0 version #, BeOS had the beginnings of multiuserness already in it. Just wasnt used iirc.

Well partly perhaps, like fileowners, but nothing doing something with it. AFAIR, Be wanted to implement multi-user but didn't see a way to do it without breaking things. Personally, I think it should be doable with some ugly hacks, and PhosphorOS did it after all, but it does take some effort to make user's directories hidden from other users et al, and not just switch wallpapers around. I don't actually know how far it's implemented in Zeta though.

Edited 2006-11-08 19:03

You just don't see it, necessarily, under their name.

This is somewhat unfortunate for yT and magnussoft as they are not necessarily getting the press they need.

There also appears to be some minor friction there that might need some work from a marketing perspective...