would open-source benefit from a security nightmare flash was? genuinely asking
having access to the source code could be a starting point to create an open source version free of its security flaws
There’s the ruffle project that does that.
Removed by mod
yeah, people could slowly start fixing it, which would be more-ish reasonable-ish since it’s not one company’s programmers but a bunch of randos from a lot of places proposing fixes and doing things
An interesting ZDNet view, about why open sourcing it might cause more harm than good: https://www.zdnet.com/article/petition-to-open-source-adobe-flash/
I don’t think it takes in consideration the simple curiosity factor though: knowing how it works and playing around with it
Open Sourcing flash wouldn’t be a security issue like the article claims. Browsers would still drop support and flash wouldn’t be used anymore. However it could be incredibly useful to projects such as ruffle that I believe could heavily benefit from having access to the source code.
We’re all passionate about the preservation of internet history
Another valid point. According to the article, though:
If you still want to play old Flash games, look at the preserved websites that made the mistake of using Flash for their front page, and so on. They can continue to use the Flash binaries. The Flash files aren’t going away.
As for Flash-to-other-format conversion tools, they’ve been around for years. You can use Mozilla’s Shumway or, while Google no longer supports it, the Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool Swiffy. There are many other Flash conversion programs available.
You don’t even need to open source it to create Flash files. In 2008, Adobe open-sourced its Flex framework, a software development kit for building Flash applications. Today, Flex lives on as an Apache Software Foundation project.So what’s the difference with Ruffle? I’m not asking to provoke, I’m genuinely curious
It’s not a conversion tool, it re-implementing the runtime itself. I don’t thing it’s the first project like that, but it’s one I know about. I’m not an expert on flash.
