it about point about tools)

Here’s another test: In the web technology space there are a few vendors from which you can get a web browser that works really well. It’s a fast-moving and fun space. We’re competing with each other and the results are fantastic. Web browsers are getting faster and faster, adding more graphical features (like video, canvas, svg, etc) You can, quite literally, get thousands of server products that deliver web technology that’s interactive and complex. It’s a growing and healthy ecosystem, from the client all the way to the server. Lots of people have lots of different models to monetize it, there’s tons of investment and lots of new players every day.

Adobe’s products run on top of some of that technology, but there are no alternatives to Adobe Flash in the marketplace for rendering, nor are there any on the horizon. Zero competition on the client. That’s not healthy. And it’s not what we want to see in the marketplace.

So not the “enemy” but certainly not a sign of health. Very different ways to put it.

I’m not precisely sure of your understanding behind the phrase “generative ecosystem”, but if we’re talking about providing a baseline video capability to more people, without any patents or copyrights or other complications, then that sounds like a good thing to me too.

(I just react when people cast Adobe Flash Player as the enemy, and that explanation “because it’s proprietary” is statistically associated with such assertions. The licensing-encumbered modern codecs we’ve got in browsers today are distinct from Adobe Flash Player as a unifier of browsers and codec distributor.)

Many people do find use for H.264, even though it doesn’t solve all needs. I hope we can both agree that all options have their positives. In other words, less “must compete”, more “what do all of us still need to build?”, agreed…?

tx, jd/adobe

Anyway, my post was about “open and free of cost” vs. “generative.” Those systems that create opportunity for everyone and allow participation without requiring permission to participate is what I was trying to explore.

As examples, VP6, H.264, and Sorenson codecs require permission and licensing to participate and generate. I’m not arguing with your point about investment, nor am I saying that free of cost is bad. I’m talking about something different – what’s required to build a generative ecosystem.

Thanks for your comment!

“… Replacing the (proprietary) Flash video codecs…”

From this I’m not sure you’re aware that Adobe has licensed high-performance video decompressors from their inventors, and is distributing them to the world for free:
1) Sorenson Sparc codec
2) On2 VP6 codec (the successor to their VP3 which was donated as Ogg Theora ‘way back in 2001)
3) H.264 codec

Without compensation to codec creators, there likely would be no Ogg Theora… the Duck Corporation invested in TrueMotion and subsequent work, and fortunately for us all they received compensation and so could continue their work.

I need to check — does what I said above make sense to you, or do you not accept it? This would give me info about how to converse further, thanks.

“Silverlight, video, adobe, multimedia, market power. How do we compete? Or, really, how do you compete?”

Why the opposition? Why the focus on “compete” rather than “cooperate with the rest of the ecology”? Why does the HTML renderer want to rule it all?

(If ya’ll can do something good with Ogg Theora, that’s fine by me… the more choices the better.)

jd/adobe

That’s exactly what I was thinking. Allow other applications to provide upload handlers, but Mozilla could provide a simple web-cam-capture-to-Ogg-Theora conversion:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46135