> In summary, my point is, my opinions cannot be dismissed because I am > "not a lawyer". It is true that even lawyers are not always right. In > fact, by virtue of the adversarial system, exactly 50% of the time > they are wrong.
this is my favourite paragraph in the whole discussion. I generally agree with the line that Hank is illustrating. when mike stated 'why do you assume they have no issues' it raised some serious concerns in my mind, why should we assume otherwise? I pay fairly close attention to a variety of flash mailing lists and the general flash diaspora, and have not noticed anything from Macromedia suggesting that any AMF related projects have 'issues' (whatever that actually means) If they do, or are likely to encounter them it would seem sensible for those to be made apparent as early as possible. From a personal perspective, my use of flash comes from a balance of certain criteria: my knowledge and the community support (to some degree they are the same thing :), the existence of tools which can provide services which are not available from macromedia themselves (or are prohibitively expensive within the context of the project) and other slightly less important criteria. IF (and thats a big if, you can tell from the caps) macromedia / adobe were to decide that someone is treading on their toes (aka reducing their profit margins, as being a commercial company that is their main concern) and reveal legal problems with a project which could have been made clear earlier, then I wouldnt hesitate in reconsidering what my favoured choice of technology is. Which in some regards may be inconsequential, after all, im just one man who is avoiding upgrading to flash 8 because i dont need it anymore to get the job done, BUT, it would also raise an alarm within the development community in general, perhaps taking away the great momentum we are building and reducing the flash community to a group of corporate evangelists. Something i doubt any of us want to see happen.. erm, that was longer than i expected...my one line summary, it seems that community generally view macromedia favourably at the moment, best not shoot the community in the foot, let them know if theres a bullet headed their way so they can avoid it. :) martin _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
