http://www.osnews.com/story/18634/Testing_Gnash_0_8_1_on_FreeBSD Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:28:22 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?272312 http://osnews.com/thread?272312 I didn't do any research on how this was accomplished. Flash is not "open" so this was reverse engineered? What version of flash compatibility are they shooting for? Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272314 http://osnews.com/thread?272314 I found this review very interesting and thorough, and the author did check the things that matter the most. Even though I use Linux I found lots of useful info as to where Gnash stands now. Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WereCatf) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272337 http://osnews.com/thread?272337 "Flash is not "open" so this was reverse engineered? "

There is a Flash spec out there. For instance, in OpenOffice, you can export Presentations to a Flash file.

Implementing the spec is easier said than done, I imagine. Radeon finally released the specs for their graphics cards, and it's several hundred pages long. Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nalf38) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272340 http://osnews.com/thread?272340 I also wonder about the legal state of Flash. I know ActionScript is an ECMAScript implementation, so maybe that's a standard free of patents, but other parts of flash are under patents, AFAIK.

So I wonder if Gnash will be in the same situation as ffmpeg, x264, libmad, etc... which are all FOSS but still can't be distributed by mainstream distributions because of patents.

Anyone know about it?

>What version of flash compatibility are they shooting for?

For now, flash 7. Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272347 http://osnews.com/thread?272347 >There is a Flash spec out there. For instance, in OpenOffice, you can export Presentations to a Flash file.

The problem is that this spec doesn't allow you to create a flash player, only to export files to SWF format.

http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/fileformat/faq/#item-1-8 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272380 http://osnews.com/thread?272380 Ouch! Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Joe User) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272396 http://osnews.com/thread?272396 Or rather, the licence to the spec doesn't allow you to make a flash player. Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Beta) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272424 http://osnews.com/thread?272424 Gnash in FreeBSD. But it's a GNU project released under the GPL. Oh, no, can't have that.

It's good to see that people can see beyond the nonsensical bullshit debates that often arise here. Both the BSD and the GPL are both copyleft licenses,even if the GPL makes it easier and more likely for all branches of the same tree to continue being developed under the same license into the future.Edited 2007-09-19 01:06 Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (porcel) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272440 http://osnews.com/thread?272440 BSD is not a "copyleft" license. Look up the term. Kirk McKusick used to joke that it was a "copycenter" license: take it down to the copy center and make as many copies as you want. Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Brandybuck) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272493 http://osnews.com/thread?272493 Whats so news worthy about someone getting their FreeBSD port to build and run properly? Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Xaero_Vincent) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272545 http://osnews.com/thread?272545 It's information worthy because of the in-depth information about Gnash. You'll get this information if you're following the link. Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Oliver) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272550 http://osnews.com/thread?272550 I think many of us dislike flash and look forward to a respectable, FOSS player for times it is really needed.

Thanks for the review. Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anomie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272551 http://osnews.com/thread?272551 When will this get put into the ports tree? Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thomas2005) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?272559 http://osnews.com/thread?272559 This really sounds promising. I didn't really expect them to get this far. I hope this takes off, so alternative OSes can properly integrate flash in their default installations.

It's a bit strange though how this guy talks about the de-synch'ed sound. No matter how fast your CPU and graphics card are, and how much RAM you have, there is inevitably some flash media that will stutter. Keeping the sound synchronized despite stuttering is definitely a must-have! Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Morin) Comments