Flex is Open source

Bas wrote:



anand.t wrote: It definitely stole the thunder from MIX. Guess what the hottest topic at MIX? “Is Microsoft going to open source Silverlight too?”

That's just pathetic. How is that ever going to be the hottest topic at MIX?

Because in Scobles world, multi-billion dollar companies decide what to do in response to competitors overnight, in "internet time".

"My god, Adobe has open sourced Flex. We must do something. We must open source something!"

"How about if we open source the Windows kernel?"

"Great, we'll announce that tomorrow. No, TONIGHT! Someone call Robert Scoble. We need his camera now more than ever!"

Adobe open sourcing some class libraries isn't anything that Microsoft is going to lose sleep over.

To be fair, that comment wasn't made by Scoble, but by some guy responding to his news post.

corona_coder wrote:

Unless its GPL its not Open Source.  The MPL is incompatiblee with the GPL..  This makes no difference.

GPL is not Open Source. It's open source with restrictions that fit with FSF's world view. Just like MS SharedSource.

BSD and MIT style licensing is Open Source. Not GPL.

Marketing buzzwords aside, what, exactly, is Apollo (or Flex for that matter) supposed to do? And how is it different from anything else that is already out there?

thumbtacks2 wrote:

Marketing buzzwords aside, what, exactly, is Apollo (or Flex for that matter) supposed to do? And how is it different from anything else that is already out there?

Adobe Marketing wrote:

Adobe® Flex™ 2 software is a rich Internet application framework based on Adobe Flash® that will enable you to productively create beautiful, scalable applications that can reach virtually anyone on any platform. It includes a powerful, Eclipse™ based development tool, an extensive visual component library, and high-performance data services enabling you to meet your applications' most demanding needs.

...
What is Flex?

The Flex application framework consists of MXML, ActionScript 3.0, and the Flex class library. Developers use MXML to declaratively define the application user interface elements and use ActionScript for client logic and procedural control. Developers write MXML and ActionScript source code using the Adobe Flex Builder™ IDE or a standard text editor.

The interon is your friend.

Here's my understanding of it. Feel free to correct me when I'm wrong.

If Flash == the .NET CLR, Flex == some of the namespaces (except for Flex Data services. That == System.Data)

Apollo == WPF/WPF/E errrr Silverlight. It either subsumes Flex or is built on top of it.

RoyalSchrubber wrote:



corona_coder wrote:Unless its GPL its not Open Source.  The MPL is incompatiblee with the GPL..  This makes no difference.

FSF is no authority to declare which license is open source or not.

The FSF is an authority on what licenses can be used with the GPL and the MPL is not compatible.  Sorry.

corona_coder wrote:



RoyalSchrubber wrote:  corona_coder wrote: Unless its GPL its not Open Source.  The MPL is incompatiblee with the GPL..  This makes no difference. FSF is no authority to declare which license is open source or not.

The FSF is an authority on what licenses can be used with the GPL and the MPL is not compatible.  Sorry.

aww shucks.. sucks to be you now don't it ...[6]

corona_coder wrote:



The FSF is an authority on what licenses can be used with the GPL and the MPL is not compatible.  Sorry.

Someone, somewhere, actually cares about this. Really they do. Honest.

Lazycoder2 wrote:



The interon is your friend.

Here's my understanding of it. Feel free to correct me when I'm wrong.

If Flash == the .NET CLR, Flex == some of the namespaces (except for Flex Data services. That == System.Data)

Apollo == WPF/WPF/E errrr Silverlight. It either subsumes Flex or is built on top of it.

I think you got it wrong. From what i understood

FLASH == the final assembly or exe

Flex SDK = CLR

Flex SDK = opensource
CLR = sharedsource

Apollo = Silverlight

I might be wrong as well    

That does sound a little better.

anand.t wrote:



Lazycoder2 wrote:  The interon is your friend. Here's my understanding of it. Feel free to correct me when I'm wrong. If Flash == the .NET CLR, Flex == some of the namespaces (except for Flex Data services. That == System.Data) Apollo == WPF/WPF/E errrr Silverlight. It either subsumes Flex or is built on top of it.

I think you got it wrong. From what i understood

FLASH == the final assembly or exe

Flex SDK = CLR

Flex SDK = opensource
CLR = sharedsource

Apollo = Silverlight

I might be wrong as well    

But I don't really see anywhere in the examples online where they use any 3-D functionality. I can see the XML-for-your-interface-design styling, but I thought Silverlight also had the 3-D abilities of WPF (?). Flash Pro 8 doesn't seem to do anything beyond the 2D realm, either.

I still think now is the time for somebody to revive that ol' Blender plug-in project.

Edit: Wait...the wikipedia entry for WPF states this:

Wikipedia wrote:

Microsoft Silverlight is a subset of WPF. During development it was named WPF/E, which stood for "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere". Silverlight is a web-based subset of WPF, based on XAML and Javascript. The Silverlight subset enables Flash-like web and mobile applications with the exact same code as Windows .NET applications. 3D features are not included, but XPS, vector-based drawing and hardware acceleration are.

Oh, nevermind...

anand.t wrote:



I think you got it wrong. From what i understood

FLASH == the final assembly or exe

Flex SDK = CLR

Flex SDK = opensource
CLR = sharedsource

Apollo = Silverlight

I might be wrong as well    

Apollo is a desktop runtime, more similar to WPF than Silverlight (which is a browser plugin).

Sliverlight competes directly with the browser based Flash player.

Flex is an application framework that can target the Flash Player and Apollo.

Ryan Stewart has a good overview here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=350

I posted some thoughts on Apollo / WPF here:

http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2007/03/18/do-apollo-and-wpf-compete-with-each-other/

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com

Thanks for the input, Mike. I looked at the zdnet link (great link, btw) and had a question...

ZDNet wrote:

Adobe's Apollo lets you build cross-platform desktop applications using the exact same code base for all of your deployments. It uses a combination of Flash and Ajax so that you can take your web skills and deploy desktop apps. However it doesn't tie as closely to the operating system as other technologies. You can't access devices from Apollo and right now the plan is not to allow execution of native code. Think of Apollo as a way to deploy applications that require a bigger sandbox than the browser (things like file system access and native windowing), but not full operating system features.

By not being able to "access devices" does that mean hard drives/USB drives/floppies/etc.? I'm also assuming it is an interpreted environment...maybe with a JIT-type compiler? How is this different from writing a Java app (which never took off on the desktop, really)...

mike.chambers wrote:



Apollo is a desktop runtime, more similar to WPF than Silverlight (which is a browser plugin).

Sliverlight competes directly with the browser based Flash player.

Flex is an application framework that can target the Flash Player and Apollo.

But Apollo applications can run in either the browser or the desktop environment correct? Or do you have to write/compile your application to both a Flash version and an Apollo version if you want the user to have the choice of either running it in the browser from a web page or run it directly on the desktop?

edit: According to Ryan Stewarts blog entry, Apollo is desktop only. I may be confusing the Trillian "Astra" version with Apollo.

corona_coder wrote:

The FSF is an authority on what licenses can be used with the GPL and the MPL is not compatible.  Sorry.

Who cares if they are compatable or not? The GPL isn't everything.

MPL is a fine open source license, as is BSD, MIT, and CDDL.

Massif wrote:



Tom Servo wrote: --edit: Note to you Lolnix clowns trying to start a troll from this, hint: It's not Linux.

You're going over to OS/2?

Seems a bit radical.

That was clever.

(Note: Sarcasm.)

thumbtacks2 wrote:



Thanks for the input, Mike. I looked at the zdnet link (great link, btw) and had a question...

By not being able to "access devices" does that mean hard drives/USB drives/floppies/etc.? I'm also assuming it is an interpreted environment...maybe with a JIT-type compiler? How is this different from writing a Java app (which never took off on the desktop, really)...

Yes, at least Apollo 1.0, you wont be able to access USB, serial etc. Apollo 1.0 is really targetted at bring rich internet application and content from the browser to the desktop.

The core virtual machine is JIT enabled (for Flash based applications). You can also build apollo applications using just HTML / JavaScript and those are interpreted (although they can call into some JITted code.

Well, one of the main differences from something like Java, is that you use higher level languages to build the applications (HTML, JavaScript, Flex, ActionScript), so it is accesible to a wider range of developers. In general, it is also easier to design and stile Apollo applications, than Java, since you use the same tools you can use today to design Flex and HTML content.

Finally, applications will be able to bind to a specific version of the runtime, and Apollo itself will be able to contain the core for multiple versions, so you dont have to work about JVM conflicts, or apps not running because the correct version is not there.

Hope that helps...

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com

Lazycoder2 wrote:



But Apollo applications can run in either the browser or the desktop environment correct? Or do you have to write/compile your application to both a Flash version and an Apollo version if you want the user to have the choice of either running it in the browser from a web page or run it directly on the desktop?

edit: According to Ryan Stewarts blog entry, Apollo is desktop only. I may be confusing the Trillian "Astra" version with Apollo.

Well, Apollo applications are built using web technologies (Flash, HTML, Flex, ActionScript, JavaScript), so you can take web content and run it directly within Apollo.

In most cases though, we expect that developers will create enhanced versions of existing web content, that take advantage of some of the additional functionality and APIs within Apollo.

Hope that helps...

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com