Flex3 will become OpenSource

[senshi]

Adobe opensources Flex (Exclusive Videos with Adobe) (http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/25/adobe-opensources-flex/)

For the german fellows:
http://golem.de/0704/51923.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/88875

[kbriggs]

Adobe opensources Flex (Exclusive Videos with Adobe) (http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/25/adobe-opensources-flex/)


I saw this also at news.com this morning:

http://news.com.com/Adobe%20to%20open-source%20Flash%20tool%20Flex/2100-7344_3-6179305.html

But from what I understand, the Flex SDK was already free, now it's just open source. And the Flex Builder program is still hundreds of dollars. So this shouldn't really affect or benefit any of us using OpenLaszlo, would it?

[Jiben]

First Adobe Flex is quite powerful but still it wasn't open source so many developpers prefered OpenLaszlo because it's safer than betting on a technology which can die with the creator (Adobe is trying to beat Microsoft after all, could be quite dangerous...).

Now that it is, this problem is solved and the community of Flex users will probably get a lot bigger which includes many professionals in fact.

So what's the position of OpenLaszlo? Their roadmap is quite different and the power of making AJAX and FLASH is an advantage. And of course, with Flex 3 SDK open source, OL developpers will be able to "get inspired" from this good framework and maybe (I hope so) we'll get a good FLASH 9 compilation and many new features (yeah, upload, validators...) but it's possible I'm dreaming about it too much...

Well, open source is always a good thing so we should be happy about Adobe's choice and it will also make OL better indirectly (rivalry is stimulous!).

Good thing not to forget : the open source packages will be released for the second half of 2007, plenty of time since then.

[antun]

kbriggs and Jiben,

You both make excellent points. The Flex 2 SDK was already free to use. I don't see how Flex becoming open source would have any effect on how much a Flex application would cost to deploy (and thereby determine how many developers adopt it).

The LZX language is well-designed for making Rich Internet Applications. This is a big strength for OpenLaszlo. If you look at OpenLaszlo's GUI components, you'll find that they're all written in LZX. This isn't true of Flex components. To me, that's a huge attraction of using OpenLaszlo over Flex. The result of this is a wide variety of unique publicly-deployed OpenLaszlo applications (http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/OpenLaszlo_Applications).

Jiben - you're correct that OpenLaszlo will support Flash Player 9. This is a substantially faster runtime than previous Flash Players. To the best of my knowledge, this is planned for 2007. It's also important to note that OpenLaszlo should be compiling to J2ME this year.

Don't underestimate the importance of OpenLaszlo's DHTML capability. It doesn't just apply to your laptop. The latest mobile phones are shipping equipped with a DHTML-enabled browser. (e.g. the upcoming iPhone). This is a big market segment that everyone's been talking about for the last few years, but so far we haven't seen much action in it. Thankfully, the technology is catching up and OpenLaszlo is pretty well poised (via DHTML and J2ME) to be dominant.

Finally, it's good to see Adobe adopting an open-source strategy too. I guess Laszlo Systems must have done something right!

Take care,

Antun

[senshi]

Finally, it's good to see Adobe adopting an open-source strategy too. I guess Laszlo Systems must have done something right!
But you shouldn't forget Microsoft's "Silverlight" in your calculation as a competing product against Adobe Flash. So Adobe has to push Flex to maintain the ubiquity of Flash.

Hopefully, we, as OpenLaszlo Developers, may gain the most profit of this development. First we can exploit Flex (feel like a surgeon :) ). Second, if somehow "Silverlight" will succeed Flash (can't really imagine), we adopt "Silverlight" as a additional Runtime. So there is nothing we should worry about...

[Benibur]

Adobe movement toward open source is a significant piece of news...
For different reasons, I consider that OL can keep its advantages.
But a I think that Apollo is a major evolution of web 2.0 and if OL was to miss this new functionnality, then I fear that it would be a reason to leave OL platform for Flex...
Does anyone have any idea about OL policy towards Apollo ?

[bhuot]

Adobe also has its Spry AJAX framework built into Dreamweaver CS3 which allows non-developers/designers to use AJAX as it doesn't require the user to do an Javascript programming. Basically it is drag and drop from the previews.

[nicko]

Seems like business as usual. If silverlight takes off, then I guess Laszlo will eventually support it and we'll be able to deploy our Laszlo apps to Flash, Silverlight or Ajax quite easily.