One of the most popular and ubiquitous rich media plug-ins for any browser
on almost any platform is the Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash player.
Thanks to efforts of the Free Software Foundation, a Free Software Flash
player called GNU Gnash is now in active development. The development is
apparently occurring without the help or support of Adobe in any way. An
Adobe/Macromedia spokesperson was unable to comment on the development.
Flash player has always been free, but not in the Free and Open Source
Software sense, as it is a proprietary application licensed under a closed
source license.
GNU Gnash, in contrast, is licensed under the GNU GPL.
There are some significant license difficulties with distributing, and to
some extent using, proprietary-licensed applications together with GPL-licensed applications. GNU Gnash would eliminate the difficulty with Flash.
“Gnash is GPL2’d, and the Free Software Foundation has the copyright,”
GNU Gnash maintainer Rob Savoye told internetnews.com. “So the standalone
player can be used by anyone, but the Flash player code can only be used by
other free software projects under the terms of the GPL.”
The FSF, which is currently undertaking a review of the GPL has actually listed the development of Gnash as one of its top six high-priority projects.
Savoye said in mailing-list postings that Gnash has not reverse-engineered its code from the
existing Macromedia player. He claims that he is a “clean developer” and has
never, “owned any Macromedia tools, signed any license agreements, nor
disassembled any Macromedia products.
“Gnash has been developed only using freely available documentation and
tools, so it can be a free implementation of a closed proprietary format,”
Savoye explained.
Since being formally announced earlier this month, Savoye noted that
there is a sizable demand for a GPL-licensed Flash player. While
Macromedia’s Flash player is available for a number of
different platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris, it’s not available for others, such as FreeBSD.
“So many people are now excited to have a solution for their platforms,”
Savoye said. “One of the big advantages of free software is the ability of
people that have machines I don’t own can help make it truly portable.”
Presently the focus of Gnash is on Flash Player (also referred to by its
file extension SWF) version 7 and not the latest version offered by
Adobe/Macromedia, which is now version 8.
Savoye explained that compatibility for version 8 is on the roadmap, but
the current focus is on getting the plug-in working followed by stabilizing
the SWF 7 support till it’s a fully functional Flash player.
“Most Flash movies on the Net are older Flash formats, which is why
that’s the current focus for the near term,” Savoye said.
GNU Gnash isn’t necessarily starting from scratch either. It is using an
existing open source project call GameSWF as a base. According to
its Web site, GameSWF is “an open source Public Domain library for parsing and rendering SWF movies, using 3D hardware APIs for rendering.”
There are a number of big challenges ahead for GNU Gnash, not the least of
which is fear of complexity.
“The biggest problem is people realize this is a potentially huge project,
as Flash is large and complex,” Savoye said. “So I think it scares some
people off. Most of the other free Flash players haven’t gotten very far
because of this.”
