Apache Flex and Corporate Independence (was Re: [VOTE] Allow RC votes to carry over...)

[Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com>]

I changed the subject.  It is interesting to hear your view point, and
warrants addressing in case others have the same impression.


On 12/5/14, 10:04 AM, "Jesse Nicholson" <as...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Anyway yes I do have genuine concerns about corporate independence. Your
>> profile says that you work for Adobe, right? I don't see how that in
>>itself
>> doesn't wrap up "corporate independence" neatly and throw it out the
>>window
>> and down the mountain side, with respect. The only target (until a
>>mature
>> flex-js) is a closed source platform owned by your employer. But even
>>then,
>> the only complete toolset for authoring against this framework is owned
>>and
>> marketed as a commercial product by your employer. The website addresses
>> this by kindly suggesting to command line everything. Well, we all know
>> that people who used flex before are stuck with Adobe Flex IDE dependent
>> project files, so yeah. Source code headers don't make copyright claims
>>but
>> rather express that the software is licensed to the apache software
>> foundation with permission to extend that license (apache license) to
>>end
>> users. So yes sir, I have genuine, real questions about how on earth
>>apache
>> could possibly be running this project independent of adobe systems
>> incorporated given everything I've mentioned above.

One of the reasons for your concern is that your email sample wasn’t large
enough.  Bertrand does work for Adobe and helped get the project going,
but only recently re-joined our mailing lists acting on behalf of the
foundation to help the project resolve the current crisis.  He has not
posted on this list for over a year before that.

You’ll see my name a lot, and Peter Ent’s with Adobe emails.   Adobe does
still invest in the Flex community by allowing us to participate at Apache.

But Adobe has no actual corporate control over Flex anymore.  Even if they
stopped letting Peter and I participate, there are plenty of other
committers to carry on the work.  Adobe Flash Builder is not the only IDE
for Flex, and in fact, is probably the most out-of-date.

The dependence of Flex on an Adobe runtime has been brought up as a
concern before, but the vast majority of code in all of Apache generally
gets run on proprietary runtimes like Java VMs from Oracle or Microsoft
Windows.  But for sure, that is one of my motivations for FlexJS, to truly
have no deploy-time dependence on Adobe.  And if you join in, maybe we’ll
get there sooner!

HTH,
-Alex

Re: Apache Flex and Corporate Independence (was Re: [VOTE] Allow RC votes to carry over...)

[Jesse Nicholson <as...@gmail.com>]

Thanks for your comments on this. Speaking of joining in, Ill come back
when I'm finished my own project to see if it can be put to use for flex js.
On 5 Dec 2014 13:28, "Alex Harui" <ah...@adobe.com> wrote:

> I changed the subject.  It is interesting to hear your view point, and
> warrants addressing in case others have the same impression.
>
>
> On 12/5/14, 10:04 AM, "Jesse Nicholson" <as...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Anyway yes I do have genuine concerns about corporate independence. Your
> >> profile says that you work for Adobe, right? I don't see how that in
> >>itself
> >> doesn't wrap up "corporate independence" neatly and throw it out the
> >>window
> >> and down the mountain side, with respect. The only target (until a
> >>mature
> >> flex-js) is a closed source platform owned by your employer. But even
> >>then,
> >> the only complete toolset for authoring against this framework is owned
> >>and
> >> marketed as a commercial product by your employer. The website addresses
> >> this by kindly suggesting to command line everything. Well, we all know
> >> that people who used flex before are stuck with Adobe Flex IDE dependent
> >> project files, so yeah. Source code headers don't make copyright claims
> >>but
> >> rather express that the software is licensed to the apache software
> >> foundation with permission to extend that license (apache license) to
> >>end
> >> users. So yes sir, I have genuine, real questions about how on earth
> >>apache
> >> could possibly be running this project independent of adobe systems
> >> incorporated given everything I've mentioned above.
>
> One of the reasons for your concern is that your email sample wasn’t large
> enough.  Bertrand does work for Adobe and helped get the project going,
> but only recently re-joined our mailing lists acting on behalf of the
> foundation to help the project resolve the current crisis.  He has not
> posted on this list for over a year before that.
>
> You’ll see my name a lot, and Peter Ent’s with Adobe emails.   Adobe does
> still invest in the Flex community by allowing us to participate at Apache.
>
> But Adobe has no actual corporate control over Flex anymore.  Even if they
> stopped letting Peter and I participate, there are plenty of other
> committers to carry on the work.  Adobe Flash Builder is not the only IDE
> for Flex, and in fact, is probably the most out-of-date.
>
> The dependence of Flex on an Adobe runtime has been brought up as a
> concern before, but the vast majority of code in all of Apache generally
> gets run on proprietary runtimes like Java VMs from Oracle or Microsoft
> Windows.  But for sure, that is one of my motivations for FlexJS, to truly
> have no deploy-time dependence on Adobe.  And if you join in, maybe we’ll
> get there sooner!
>
> HTH,
> -Alex
>
>