Re: [Gnash-dev] Gnash 0.8.2 on OLPC XO?

[Aaron Whitehouse]

On 15/04/2008, Russ Nelson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Aaron Whitehouse writes:
>   > What Free software needs is an IDE that brings together existing open
>   > standards to fill the same niche as Flash (SVG + video element tags
>   > etc).

> You have identified the problem.  Describing the problem is a very
>  good first step.  Now you need to create a solution, and then, the
>  biggest job is ahead of you: getting people to adopt it instead of
>  Flash.  As strongly as we-all here may feel about software freedom,
>  most people don't and most people never will.  Heck, most people are
>  willing to give up their freedom for shiny baubles.

I was not trying to convince the world to rate Freedom above shiny
baubles. While it is tempting to get into a discussion over whether
some non-Free is good for Free software as a whole, it has been argued
many times before.

John (I believe it was John) was saying that most OLPC applications
were written in Free languages and that we would have more great Free
OLPC Flash applications if there was a good Free Flash IDE:

> I don't think I've ever seen a decent Flash authoring environment for
> Linux (one where you could drag stuff around and out pops an animation).
> Got one handy?  You might get more free OLPC Flash movies as a result.

My point was that if the intention is for Free-software advocates to
spend their time in order to create Freedom, the last thing that makes
sense to me is encourage them to develop a program that promotes a
proprietary solution.  By all means, don't expect everyone to jump
on-board the IDE that outputs a Free Flash equivalent; but the reality
is that very few would jump on board the Free Gnu/Linux
Flash-authoring environment that John requested - Adobe's product is,
and probably always will be, the best tool for the job if you don't
care about software freedom.

Aaron

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