Flash Player on FreeBSD

[Michael Vince]

Jeff Cross wrote:

>I have seen a number of e-mails lately about a petition for having a
>native Flash Player for the FreeBSD operating system.  I have noticed
>that the flashplayer* plugin has been removed from the ports tree and I
>understand why.  But, what needs to happen to allow FreeBSD users to use
> the Flash Player plugin?
>
>I just saw where Verizon and Adobe have come to an agreement to allow
>Verizon to put the Flash Player on their mobile phones.
>
>http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/biztech/04/06/adobe.verizon.reut/index.html?section=cnn_tech
>
>Would it be possible to approach Adobe about getting this kind of
>agreement for FreeBSD?  I mean, their EULA says the software can't be
>used on the Windows XP Media Center operating system (unless I have
>misread this, please correct me if I'm wrong). There are a number of
>laptops coming out now with the Media Center OS on them.  Don't you
>think they run Flash Player on them?
>
>I'm not trying to kick a dead horse here.  Like I said earlier, I know
>this has been discussed time and time again.  But, I thoroughly enjoy
>using FreeBSD.  I rarely boot in to Windows any more.  As much as I hate
>to admit it, it just feels natural to visit a Flash enabled web site and
>have it work on FreeBSD.  Even though I don't visit that many (on
>purpose anyway), when I do I like to see what I visited the site to see,
>even if that happens to be Flash enabled content.
>
>I'm sure I'm not as smart as most of you guys, and don't claim to be,
>but I am willing to help!
>
>Jeff Cross
>www.averageadmins.com
>_______________________________________________
>  
>
I believe the only way this is going to happen is probably the same way 
Verizon got theres and thats with handing over money.
I think if some one asked how much money it would cost to get 
Macromedia/Adobe to port/create a flash player they might tell us say $20k
This could easily be reached since other fund raises for FreeBSD have 
accumulated large amounts of money pretty fast.
I talked about this in mid March for the FreeBSD Java project on this 
mailing list as I noticed that Andre Oppermann fund raise was obviously 
quite successful.

Also Colin Percival did a fund raise less then a week ago got his target 
of $15,000 Canadian in less then a week just to rewrite 2 programs which 
are already fully functional.

Andre Oppermann got the bulk of his US $18k in just a few days, this 
proves that this style of fund raise model does seem to work every well.
http://people.freebsd.org/~andre/tcpoptimization.html

I have lost count at how many times I have seen people ask for flash and 
do petitions to no avail, I think the only way to do it is via a fund 
raise if you can get Macromedia to do the work as it couldn't really be 
much more then a port of the linux work that they must keep to the selves.
Admittedly flash doesn't bother me that much as I am not much a 
multimedia guy but theres no doubt its a missing slice of pie in the 
FreeBSD desktop arena which is becoming increasingly popular.
I mean FreeBSD as a desktop can make a lot of sense as one of the best 
alternatives to MS Windows and even Linux, simply because FreeBSD has 
less potential legal issues, no company can easily embrace even Linux 
with out the fear of another SCO legal case or start embedding custom 
binaries here in there that could interfere with GPL and jeopardize 
their upstart against Dell using cheaper OS's etc.

The only question is does any one have the motivation to to the 
organizing of a flash fund raise, this doesn't take much technical skill 
just more business skill as your dealing with a external money oriented 
company.

Mike