Submitted by “Today Adobe announced that the EMCAScript 4 compatible virtual machine in the Adobe Flash Player has been contributed to the Mozilla project under the name Tamarin. It is the single largest contribution to Mozilla since its inception and consist of about 135000 lines of source code. The engine is fully open source using the standard Mozilla license, with the Mozilla foundation retaining full ownership.”
Windows with all its security and virus problems and now the problems with IE7, see security bulletins, being just as unsecure as IE5/6.
Adobe is a very keen company..its time to start porting InDesign and Photoshop to Linux/BSD, no need for the source just a working native program, i am willing to pay for them. Go Adobe!
This is great for linux.
finally i was able to install flash player from within firefox 2.0.
I wish to be able to install flash 9 though.
Thanks for Adobe contribution and we look forward more contributions to improve open source software.
You can install Flash Player 9 for your Mozilla Firefox 2.0 under Linux.
Flash Player 9 for Linux is available as a beta download in http://labs.adobe.com , enjoy!
I believe they mean ECMAScript. Not EMCAScript.
This is the standardized scripting language which corresponds to JavaScript and ActionScript.
So the question is, how does this VM compare to the Gecko engine’s current JavaScript implementation in terms of performance, memory footprint, etc?
It’s faster, thanks to the jit, and smaller, thanks to the gc.
Yeah! Go Adobe!
Great to see a company helping OSS like this.
Unlike (cough) Novell (cough) MS….
> Unlike (cough) Novell (cough) MS….
Novell contributed _much_ more code to OSS. You’re not fair! Don’t remember that this doesn’t mean that flash became open source software or they make a first step for making it such. No chance for oss flash from Adobe IMHO.
So perhaps it could be adapted for Python or Ruby. Now we can wait until someone put it in the Computer Language Shoutout
Actually, I think they’re already working on making Python an alternative to Javascript in Mozilla.
Mozilla Public License alone would be very bad for open source projects. http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/
SpiderMonkey is licensed under MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1 (all 3 over the whole code), the developer can choose which license the use.
If Mozilla now would choose to replace parts with MPL-only code, it would eliminate the usage of SpiderMonkey in GPL- and LGPL-projects !!!
… and remember it’s not just about SpiderMonkey, but also about Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. … all use the SpiderMonkey-Javascript Engine and all are licensed under MPL, GPL and LGPL!
Let’s hope that Mozilla.org/.com team is not as stupid and act like this. Make sure the whole code is compatible with GPL/LGPL as well!
… if not, more mozilla forks may happen, Debian already has started, more may follow.
It would be better to rethink what MPL-only code can cause.
Remember that the Flash Action-/Javascript engine has been forked of the Netscape/Mozilla Javascript Engine (now called “SpiderMonkey”) a few years ago. Macromedia mention this in their help-documentation (up-to Flash MX (aka 6)). Now as Abobe owns Flash, the web-based information has been removed (but still access-able with archive.org).
So Adobe, please release the code as MPL, GPL and LGPL licensed or keep your code, as it would hurt more then help, in a broader term of view.
It’s like if Apple would give their webkit (KHTML fork) back to KDE devs, which would drop KHTML instead and use Apples own license (+ additionally GPL). (… that’s just for illustration purpose)
Edited 2006-11-08 07:40
Calm down frik85, if you bothered to look it up you would have seen that the code is under the same tri-license that the rest of Mozilla’s code is under. MPL/GPL/LGPL. Otherwise you are right, they would have to change their license policy for Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. and that is not going to happen.
My worry about the license was justified. Thanks for the information.
I have read the OSAlert.com, kaourantin.net and adobe.com news article about that topic and all mention only MPL … that’s why I wrote my first comment.
Although mozilla.org wrote:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
“The Tamarin source code is available via CVS at mozilla/js/tamarin/. This code is licensed under the same Mozilla tri-license (MPL/GPL/LGPL) as other Mozilla code.” [Last modified November 7, 2006]
So, if this information still apply, then the whole deal (Mozilla-Adobe) is okay.
There won’t be license problems then.
It’s like if Apple would give their webkit (KHTML fork) back to KDE devs, which would drop KHTML instead and use Apples own license (+ additionally GPL). (… that’s just for illustration purpose)
Huh? KHTML is LGPL, Apple can’t change that to their own license, which is why Webkit is LGPL and available for anyone to download. The only issue with KDE is that they’re butting heads with the Apple devs and their agenda on Webkit development, but there are KDE devs right now submitting code and patches to Apple for Webkit. The only debate over whether or not to go with Webkit in KDE is whether the KDE should be at Apple’s whim for project development timelines and risk having to fork, or just stick with KHTML and backporting changes where applicable.
Interestingly, at least in the context of this article to keep it relevant, Adobe is using Webkit HTML and Javascript for their upcoming Apollo project, so they’ll be contributing as well.