On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 3:18 PM, Carlos Velasco <carlos.velasco.bla...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think the flex framework and universe needs to pass a rebranding process > to separate itself from the Adobe products past and future destiny. I mean, > it is no more an Adobe product, but a new one with its own lifecycle... So, > moving to a new brand would throw away every Adobe's bad inheritances from > the past.
The brand is the strongest and most popular brand the web has even known. Adobe spent 4 billion to acquire it from Macromedia, and did a decent job at migrating it from an animation solution used to move stuff around on web pages (including banner ads, the worst thing happening to Flash), into an enterprise class technology, toolchain, workflow and ecosystem called the Flash Platform. Adobe toke the new language (AS3) and VM to the next level. AS3 was entirely rewritten from the ground up to support Flex as a fully object oriented, enterprise class programming language released co-jointly with Flex 1.5 over a year before being available in the Flash Pro (timeline based) IDE. Adobe took the Flex 1.5 technology (a $12,000 application server with a Dreamweaver based IDE), turned it into a few hundreds dollars Eclipse plugin, evangelized the hell out of it to the Java community, and made it the best in class application development technology EVER, to this day. We, Flex developers, introduced the very concept of "apps" a decade ahead of industry, Apple included. We invented Rich Internet Applications (RIA), a revolutionary concept meant to bring the desktop application experience onto the web. Everyone calls it "apps" today. Apollo, known today as Adobe AIR, completed the full circle of cross-platform apps from desktop, to web browsers, back to desktop, and eventually mobile devices. This is what made Steve Jobs crap his pants because it truly had the mean and power to make the iOS ecosystem irrelevant. Without iOS owning 95% of the mobile application market for over 2 years, there would have been no such thing as Apple as we know it today. This is what pushed the Machiavellian to orchestrate what I have been calling since November 2010 "the biggest smear campaign, unfair competition scheme, and antitrust violation in the entire history of the World Wide Web, probably even in the history of modern technology. Bill Gates got humiliated by the Federal Trade Commission, and Windows banned from the entire European Community for a fraction of what Steve Jobs pulled off. > The product, in my opinion, should focus on covering what it was made for > (and Adobe always failed to get the world to fully understand); what is: > Heavy Enterprise Rich Internet Applications. Agreed. > I mean. JS is for web development and so it should be, but it becomes a > nightmare when used in complex applications. That is where FLEX is the best > technology, and so it should take its market. JS is today what AS was until 2006: a script to move stuff around in web pages. I know we should never say never, but read my lips: JS will NEVER compete with the Flash Platform, unless the platform is assassinated and the web retrograded to what it was 15 years ago. Remind you something? It is called the mobile web today. > I also think that if the community is to be taken in a serious way, it > should refactor some other things: > > - Create an open source virtual machine maintained by the community. > (Please run away from the Player word at the name, it is not a serious > name), but depending on Adobe is the tomb way in the near future. Amen. This is the project I named "The Player" because to the contrary, this is what it is. I believe the way to go is to take it to the opposite of what everyone is trying to do, avoid the word "Player". It should be called just that, "The" Player. > - Expand the AS language to get improvements and a roadmap. Adobe released the blue print of what should have been AS4. Why? It screamed: take it and do something with it! > - Forget about basic web features and be centered in the big companies > world. They can be sub-grounds with developers micro-communities who need those features. > - Encourage web developers to adopt JS or others as their platform. Focus > on enterprise developments where a big team is required to get the goal. We do not need to encourage them to adopt JS, the creative communities and W3C evangelists are doing a good job at it. If we can do it with JS, it should not be Flash in the first place. > - Clean the Framework API and extend it. Logical. > Flex was sold as the Web Technology for every project, so it got many > enemies in the way, but Adobe failed defending the product. Now the new > Apache product has to find its place in the market, needs a lot of > reliability from big companies, and having the Adobe's past so present is > resting so much to the technology's future. > > Do you agree? I am putting together the Open Screen Foundation to accomplish that. The idea is a new approach to technology nonprofit organization, which will do what Adobe is unable or unwilling to do, in ways that diverge from other foundation such as Apache. Few programs include Occupy Silicon movement, this is what should have been the response to Jobs' "thermonuclear war" on competition (instead of what I believe turned to be a conspiracy as part of which Adobe killed Flash Player on Android). Add a watchdog, to keep Silicon Valley accountable for its actions, exposing corporate games and nasty agendas. A developer Union, to make sure that the scandal that recently exploded to the face of Apple, screwing over hundred thousand tech workers as part of an industry wide conspiracy of which Judge Koh (the same judge that gave Apple its billion dollar patent victory against Samsung), named Steve Jobs "the principal element" to the point that Apple shareholders are now suing Tim Cook, a bunch of executive, board members, and the personal estate of Steve Jobs for "walking antitrust" conspiracy, costing Apple millions, and its reputation. A developer academy and placement agency, along with a technical support service provider to train, market and support the next generation of application developers, bringing Flex tech and community back where it belongs, at the top of the games, the most highly demanded class of developers professionals, with rates at top of the pay scale. A crowdfunding platform for those who want to build their own apps instead of working for corporation to do the same. And a PR branch to take on the big fancy CEOs in the media face to face. And the Open Screen Project, taken where Adobe left it (the company abandoned the trademarks and I acquired them). -Stephane
