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### On the use of flash

Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:42:15 -0400

----- Forwarded message from "Mikko V. Viinam?ki" <Mikko.Viinamaki at students.turkuamk.fi> -----

    Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:35:36 +0300
    From: "Mikko V. Viinam?ki" <Mikko.Viinamaki@students.turkuamk.fi>
    To: TAG <tag@lists.linuxgazette.net>
    To: "editor at linuxgazette.net" <editor at linuxgazette.net>
    Subject: On the use of flash

I just wanted to object. No cartoon is way better than a flash cartoon.

I see you've hashed it somewhat already. Just my 2 cents.

I really like the gazette otherwise.

Mikko

----- End forwarded message -----

    --
    * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

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Ben Okopnik [ben at okopnik.com]

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:04:54 -0400

Hi, Mikko -

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 08:35:36PM +0300, Mikko V. Viinam?ki wrote:

    > I just wanted to object. No cartoon is way better than a flash cartoon.

I must admit that I get really, really puzzled when I hear or read something like this. If you dislike Flash this much, why would you spend time looking at it? Why not just click the "Back" button, or surf to another page - and perhaps remember the author's name so you can avoid seeing his work in the future?

    > I see you've hashed it somewhat already. Just my 2 cents.

And this implies that you even have a Flash interpreter installed with/for your browser. Why would you do that if you hated it this much? If I was in your place, I'd use a text browser like "w3m" and never worry about seeing a Flash image again - and I would certainly not install the Flash plugin if I was going to use a graphical browser.

What am I missing?

    > I really like the gazette otherwise.

Thanks! I appreciate that, and will pass it on to the LG staff.

Regards,

    --
    * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

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Ben Okopnik [ben at okopnik.com]

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:00:50 -0400

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 08:34:44AM +0300, Mikko.Viinamaki at students.turkuamk.fi wrote:

    >
    > I don't spend any time looking at it, I just noticed the links to .swf
    > files on the pages in the full page view mode. I was genuinely
    > surprised and not positively. I'm not so very concerned of my own well
    > being but that of the entire LG readership.

Now I'm really confused. How does a Flash cartoon affect someone's well-being?

Perhaps you're operating from the idea of "Flash = proprietary = EVIL, and therefore must never be used by anyone associated with Linux". In that case, I'd recommend talking to the OpenOffice people, whose software reads Microsoft's DOC, XLS, PPT, and other formats; I'd also consider starting a campaign against the Gnash project (GNU's free SWF movie player), "flasm" (free assembler/disassembler for Flash), the Ming project (libraries which allow you to generate Flash under Linux), "swfdec", and so on. I'd also recommend taking a look at any other Linux-related web publication: every single one of them uses Flash, at least in their ads.

This idea of that kind of "purity" in the Linux world is a mistaken one, as well as being dangerous to the whole concept of Linux. Sure, the kernel itself must remain forever Free and open - but trying to live in some sort of a sterile void where nothing but the perfect, 100%-accepted document formats are used is an unrealistic dream. In the real world, people need to get their work done - and you cannot deny that a very large part of the business world uses proprietary formats. The choices come down to 1) adapt and survive, and change the world, or 2) fade away and die.

Linux is alive, viable, expanding, and thriving today because the app developers wisely decided to go with choice #1. The most popular Open Source app in the world - OpenOffice - is a loud and explicit statement of what really works. By the same token, Flash is ubiquitous, and in constant demand; by my estimate, it used to be the most complained-about problem under Linux (it's become much less of a problem today, since most distros allow you to install it via their package installation system.) I can guarantee you that the average Windows user will not switch to Linux if they have to lose their ability to view Flash. No YouTube? No Flash games? No cute little dancing badgers? The answer will be "NO, THANK YOU." Period.

As to our cartoons: Shane Collinge, whose art I and many others enjoy, publishes his work in the Flash format - and frankly, I find that format to be much more efficient (with regard to file size) than anything I could convert it to. Having carefully considered all the pro and con arguments for myself, I saw nothing wrong with using Flash in LG, and still don't; if anything, the "pro" side is even stronger than it was, while the "con" side has faded away to almost nothing.

    > The comment about "hashing" was referring to this
    > http://linuxgazette.net/124/misc/nottag/flash.html and in particular
    > quote "Just for the record, exactly one person complained last month."

Yours is the second one, then. It's been more than four years since the last one. It's obviously not something that weighs heavily on most people's minds.

    --
    * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

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afsilva at gmail.com [(afsilva at gmail.com)]

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:44:14 -0400

    > In the real world,
    > people need to get their work done - and you cannot deny that a very
    > large part of the business world uses proprietary formats. The choices
    > come down to 1) adapt and survive, and change the world, or 2) fade away
    > and die.
    >
    >

+1

Well said, I wish more open source advocates would see this...

AS

    --
    http://www.the-silvas.com

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Steve Brown [steve.stevebrown at gmail.com]

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:16:12 +0100

2010/7/13 Ben Okopnik <ben at okopnik.com>:

    > Hi, Mikko -
    >
    > On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 08:35:36PM +0300, Mikko V. Viinam?ki wrote:
    >> I just wanted to object. No cartoon is way better than a flash cartoon.
    >
    > I must admit that I get really, really puzzled when I hear or read
    > something like this.

Not as puzzled as I am. I thought that Mikko was referring to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(comics)

Looks like I should re-start the medication ...

    --
    Steve

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Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:55:17 +0100

On 14 July 2010 16:44, afsilva at gmail.com <afsilva at gmail.com> wrote:

    >
    >> In the real world,
    >> people need to get their work done - and you cannot deny that a very
    >> large part of the business world uses proprietary formats. The choices
    >> come down to 1) adapt and survive, and change the world, or 2) fade away
    >> and die.
    >>
    >
    > +1
    >

Ugh. Please, don't do that.

    > Well said, I wish more open source advocates would see this...
    >

I think it would be much better to be clear on what it is you're advocating and why. "Flash is bad" as a general statement... well, why?

From the Free Software advocacy point of view: just blindly shouting "Flash is bad" helps nobody -- it's missing an opportunity to promote the Free alternatives.

(For the record, as well as Gnash, there's also Lightspark, which supports only the newer version of Flash - https://launchpad.net/lightspark - and Gordon, which is a Javascript/HTML5 based implementation of a Flash runtime - http://wiki.github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/)

From the Open Source advocacy point of view: see Ben's answer, I guess.

From the Open Standards advocacy point of view, it would be a little more effective to actually mention which standard it is that should be used instead of a particular usage of Flash (in this case, SVG is the open standard for vector graphics).

    --
    <Leftmost> jimregan, that's because deep inside you, you are evil.
    <Leftmost> Also not-so-deep inside you.

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Jim Jackson [jj at franjam.org.uk]

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:57:07 +0100 (BST)

On Tue, 13 Jul 2010, Ben Okopnik wrote:

    > Hi, Mikko -
    >
    > On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 08:35:36PM +0300, Mikko V. Viinam?ki wrote:
    >> I just wanted to object. No cartoon is way better than a flash cartoon.
    >
    > I must admit that I get really, really puzzled when I hear or read
    > something like this. If you dislike Flash this much, why would you spend
    > time looking at it? Why not just click the "Back" button, or surf to
    > another page - and perhaps remember the author's name so you can avoid
    > seeing his work in the future?
    >
    >> I see you've hashed it somewhat already. Just my 2 cents.
    >
    > And this implies that you even have a Flash interpreter installed
    > with/for your browser. Why would you do that if you hated it this much?
    > If I was in your place, I'd use a text browser like "w3m" and never
    > worry about seeing a Flash image again - and I would certainly not
    > install the Flash plugin if I was going to use a graphical browser.
    >
    > What am I missing?

I think I'd take a middle ground here. I think a lot of of people in the open world felt pretty aggrieved at the arrival of flash into the standards based WWW. I was certainly one. It fragmented the web in a proprietorial land grab - it still does, though less than previously. Many extensively flash based sites have accessibility issues. I find that many flash exponents are highly dismissive of the standard alternatives, to the extent they do not consider accessibility issues. I also find flash an affront in that it panders to the providers wish to dictate the presentation of the information. Compare and contrast with my flexibility over how I see things with CSS etc.

Having said that, I'm no purist, and by installing Flashblock on Firefox, I see less adverts, have pages load quicker, and can selectively view those flash sections I may be interested in - yes youtube, said cartoons, etc.

cheers Jim

    >
    >> I really like the gazette otherwise.
    >
    > Thanks! I appreciate that, and will pass it on to the LG staff.
    >
    >
    > Regards,
    > --
    > * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
    >
    > TAG mailing list
    > TAG at lists.linuxgazette.net
    > http://lists.linuxgazette.net/listinfo.cgi/tag-linuxgazette.net
    >

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