On Monday 28 August 2006 17:12, Uncle Koh wrote:
And I don't know whether it is only .swf that is closed non standard and .flv is some standard video format, or both are propietary and flv support by free software is reverse engineering or otherwise hard work without much guarantee to be maintainable because of the aribtrarieness of the format...
I once asked RMS about this and he mentioned there is no danger to using the Flash format, the same thing goes for PDF. The specification of it is open.
I think with modern PDF versions there is a danger that you cannot implementing them without hitting software patents in some parts of the world. Because this is a danger to all software (free and non-free) it should remind us to fight software patents.
What he laments is the lack of a good flash player and he discourages use of the Flash format till the day we have one.
This is the same problem with some subsets of PDF, e.g. forms are not nicely supported yet. Many public administrations use it and implicitely and sometimes explicitely promote proprietary software with buttons like: Get X player!