On Tuesday 04 March 2008 22:32:02 Adam Leach wrote:
...
> I hope the BBC does not spend licence fee money on the development of
> Gnash. This money should be spent to benefit the majority of the
> license payers, not just a very small group.
Your point of targeting licence fee money to benefit the majority of license
fee payers rather than small groups is a very common one. (However, it's not
universal - think "minority" programming - for example. Sky at Night :)
I don't think that's the question raised.
The question I think you're raising there is _will_ it benefit the majority
of license fee payers?
I'm trying below to _not base_ my post on personal beliefs of right and
wrong. That basis isn't testable, measurable and repeatable and is
subject to debate and flame wars (as well as real world laws). I'll
leave arguments based on belief to others. I'll just ask some questions.
However, based on raw numbers of Gnash users right now the answer is
clearly not - Gnash users are not a majority - which is presumably what you
were referring to.
That said, that's only one metric. There are others, and furthermore there are
more possibilities here than just "who uses what platform right now".
I'm going to base it on the following observation:
* Many IETF standards (among others) start off in the following way:
* Someone implements something.
* Someone else implements something compatible (either due to reverse
engineering, or based on an informational RFC or other source)
* After significant amounts of faffing around, due to the existance
of multiple implementations and common consensus, that thing
can become a standard.
Now, ignoring the faffing around part which I did note can be quite
significant (as well as incidental, but there is often faff)...
The next observation is that flash is very much a defacto standard at present
with a fair few incomplete reimplementations (gnash is one, there are others).
That leads me to wonder the following:
1 If Gnash, or any other implementation, reaches the stage of compatibility
with Adobe's implementation, then it will reach the "multiple
implementations" criteria required by various standards groups. Would
there be a measurable, testable benefit to users at that stage?
2 It it did, would Adobe be interested in standardising Flash? I can see
various good business reasons in favour of this, but given they are
very much in a dominant position there at present, I can see lots of
good business reasons for them not to do this _at present_ .
3 Would it be beneficial to the majority of license fee payers to have
a standards based inbrowser virtual machine in the form of a flash
compatible engine - especially if it was extensible to support more
video codecs by default? (Something pretty doable if its an open
system since you can define an appropriate interface) Two examples
here are SMPTE VC1 and VC2.
Given open standards are generally a good thing for consumers, based on
significant amounts of evidence (rather than just personal beliefs of right
and wrong) in the past, is it reasonable to assume "yes" to the question in
3) above?
That's where we enter belief since we hit a value judgement based on past
evidence. Based on past evidence of the benefits of open standards and the
fact that flash is very heavily used, I would personally say the balance of
evidence suggests that it would be a good idea. However that's personal
judgement.
Regarding 2) - would it happen? Realistically, it requires common consensus,
which would HAVE to include Adobe. Do I think they're ready? No idea -
there's mixed signals coming from them. They have standardised PDF in the
past though, so maybe.
So again at this point we again hit value judgement. I did put a view
here, but I think it's more interesting if I don't. Also, I feel it's less
testable, or measurable, making it much less supportable opinion.
My *guess* is not soon, but not suprised if they did.
If it is viewed as beneficial in 3) and that my guess is right in 2)
that Adobe wouldn't standardise until there was a complete competing
implementation, then we come to 1).
So now we come to 1). Out of all the implementations out there which
exist to varying degrees of completeness, why support any particular
reimplementation? Again, I can't answer that, but I can put some
observations.
It's possible after all that completeness of implementation won't lead to
widespread uptake. After all, most users already have an installed version,
and have little incentive to upgrade, unless they percieve a practical
immediate benefit. (eg access to content or functionality)
That IMO requires something more than "just" reimplementation.
You'll note I'm not choosing any particular reimplementation of flash.
I can't see any specific benefits of one over any other at present -
other than feature completeness of reimplementation (which as noted
whilst necessary I doubt is sufficient). Given all the ones I know of are
incomplete, changing to any of the reimplementations is likely to be
viewed by the majority of people as a disbenefit rather than a benefit,
which is why I'm not choosing.
On a final note, if it was felt an area we'd be interested in promoting
as standardising, does the BBC have a history of working in building
standards where there can be a demonstrable benefit to the license fee
payer? Yes. Most recently this includes the standardisation of a subset
of Dirac as Dirac Pro or VC2 via SMPTE.
Does this all support the idea that the BBC should support Gnash towards
its goal of feature completeness? I don't think so (personal judgement),
mainly because of my view above as an answer to 2) rather than anything
else.
That suggests, to me, the argument of throwing financial support towards
Gnash would have to based on other reasons at this stage. The one I
naturally think of doesn't seem valid (to me) at present.
However it's just my opinion, I'm NOT a decision maker, and this isn't in
any way the view of the BBC. (I doubt the BBC has a view at this point in
time :-)
All this could change of course, since it's dependent on the actions of
others. Am I concerned at the idea of a gatekeeper over BBC content? Yes.
Are gatekeepers a risk ? Generally speaking, yes. Again, I feel that's
measurable and testable as right or wrong based on past experience. Could
that be an alternative reason to look at Gnash? Dunno - depends on how
large this specific risk is.
I can see other issues with Gnash as well, which I don't feel relevant
here, but this change probably describes why better than I can:
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gnash/COPYING?root=gnash&r1=1.3&r2=1.3.2.1
That appears to kybosh certain proprietary applications.
Regards,
Michael.
--
All the above is personal opinion, no-one elses (as far as I know :), and
certainly not my employers!
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