First of all what I suggest are replacing a single de facto standard for applets/rich clients, flash, with an open source alternative.
There are really only two options here. Accept Flash which are the only current competing standard applicable to the use cases we are discussing. The other option are to create a new open standard which are designed to be easy to implement and reuse as much existing FOSS technology as possible. Well of course one can always write an open standard that are hard to implement and do not reuse existing technology, like the Chromium team are doing with Native Client. The first option are being done by the Lightspark project in what I consider a very slow pace, which are not surprising as they are implementing support for a proprietary standard from a corporation that have no interest in clones. And the third option where we find Native Client, that thing are even more incomplete than Lightspark.
What do you suggest I spend my efforts on in order to get a FOSS alternative to the proprietary Flash player? Lightspark? Native Client? Because seriously think that I have to put a lot more effort into making any of those two to do what I want a FOSS plugin to do.
That xkcd may be true in some cases, but the more usual result are that there are less competing standards after an attempt to do what the stripe proposes.
For example creating a new standard to replace several previously competing standards worked out pretty well for C++, Java and many other open standards and FOSS projects. Even quite crappy standards like XML did a good job when it comes to decrease the amount of existing standards. In fact most packages I have installed in my distributions are based on new standards meant to replace old standards. I have Firefox meant to replace Internet Explorer (I was there in the trenches installing Firefox everywhere even if it could only view like 5% of the web).
Its a fact that rich client engines/applets are used by a lot of users. There are only two standards for those today, Flash and Java Applets. Its also a fact that among these two, Flash are the clearly dominant rich client engine because of its better graphics and multimedia capacities.
Neither HTML5 nor PDF covers the use cases that Flash and Java Applets cover. If they did, they would be used on YouTube and the various other sites that use Flash or Java Applets. Those two standards may be enough for you, but that makes you part of a quite small minority.
And yes I do know that the HTML5 and JavaScript people are trying to promote that combination as a rich platform, but those standards do not cover even half of the functionality that are expected of a rich platform. With GWT or Vaadin you can get something that remotely resembles rich clients, but with a lot less functionality than Flash.
Some of my projects require Swing, or something equivalent. I do not see that happening with HTML5 or JavaScript. I have tried GWT/Vaadin but it do not come even close to being like Swing. Also neither are able to play videos or run a VNC client efficiently.
Yeah running a VNC client are actually a use case for me, and probably for many others. However I do know that I am in no majority with that. The real reason people use flash are video sites like youtube, and browser (zero install) games.
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First of all what I suggest are replacing a single de facto standard for applets/rich clients, flash, with an open source alternative.
There are really only two options here. Accept Flash which are the only current competing standard applicable to the use cases we are discussing. The other option are to create a new open standard which are designed to be easy to implement and reuse as much existing FOSS technology as possible. Well of course one can always write an open standard that are hard to implement and do not reuse existing technology, like the Chromium team are doing with Native Client. The first option are being done by the Lightspark project in what I consider a very slow pace, which are not surprising as they are implementing support for a proprietary standard from a corporation that have no interest in clones. And the third option where we find Native Client, that thing are even more incomplete than Lightspark.
What do you suggest I spend my efforts on in order to get a FOSS alternative to the proprietary Flash player? Lightspark? Native Client? Because seriously think that I have to put a lot more effort into making any of those two to do what I want a FOSS plugin to do.
That xkcd may be true in some cases, but the more usual result are that there are less competing standards after an attempt to do what the stripe proposes.
For example creating a new standard to replace several previously competing standards worked out pretty well for C++, Java and many other open standards and FOSS projects. Even quite crappy standards like XML did a good job when it comes to decrease the amount of existing standards. In fact most packages I have installed in my distributions are based on new standards meant to replace old standards. I have Firefox meant to replace Internet Explorer (I was there in the trenches installing Firefox everywhere even if it could only view like 5% of the web).
Its a fact that rich client engines/applets are used by a lot of users. There are only two standards for those today, Flash and Java Applets. Its also a fact that among these two, Flash are the clearly dominant rich client engine because of its better graphics and multimedia capacities.
Neither HTML5 nor PDF covers the use cases that Flash and Java Applets cover. If they did, they would be used on YouTube and the various other sites that use Flash or Java Applets. Those two standards may be enough for you, but that makes you part of a quite small minority.
And yes I do know that the HTML5 and JavaScript people are trying to promote that combination as a rich platform, but those standards do not cover even half of the functionality that are expected of a rich platform. With GWT or Vaadin you can get something that remotely resembles rich clients, but with a lot less functionality than Flash.
Some of my projects require Swing, or something equivalent. I do not see that happening with HTML5 or JavaScript. I have tried GWT/Vaadin but it do not come even close to being like Swing. Also neither are able to play videos or run a VNC client efficiently.
Yeah running a VNC client are actually a use case for me, and probably for many others. However I do know that I am in no majority with that. The real reason people use flash are video sites like youtube, and browser (zero install) games.