On 09/17/2010 12:24 PM, Neil Kandalgaonkar wrote:
Discussions about using closed source tools are not
taboo. Not at all, I
think we should continue to review decisions about tools. I myself have
raised questions about (for instance) our decision to never use Flash,
even if we use a 100% free toolchain.
I don't think we were ever against flash player as part of a tool set to
widely support free formats.
Flash is widely deployed consistent applet environment, there is no
reason to avoid supporting it if it helps distribute ~free~ content. For
example we have had brief talks of adding flash svg viewer so that IE
users could better interact with SVG files. And you can be sure that
once adobe ships native support for WebM it will provide much better
experience for IE visitors to view free format videos than the
fragmented java VM ecosystem that cortado has to run in.
The foundation has only had a position of support for free formats, it
has to my knowledge never stated any position against proprietary
clients viewing free content or open source applets in proprietary
platforms. Most of our visitors use IE after all.
--michael