It's not about "wanting Flash to die". It's about improving web browsers so Flash is not necessary.
The HTML 5 technology stack is not well positioned to do everything Flash can do though - and I pointed out three key places where that's absolutely the case.
The biggest point though is that HTML creeps slowly forward through a standards process that is laborious at best. Flash, being a de-facto standard controlled by one company doesn't have to wait - it can push and prod forward and let developers explore new ideas and create new experiences. Even if you don't care for Flash, you should appreciate what it does for pushing the web forward. Sure there are missteps - I think Flash ads are awful too, but the work and because of that HTML5 and canvas will be used to build just as annoying ads in the future.
the standards committee dont "design" the internet, by definition to become a specification someone needs to have implemented it, browser vendors are free to implement cool new features as fast as they want, w3c is just a forum for agreement on those new features.
if we were waiting on rubber stamping from the w3c, we wouldnt even be using ajax right now.
Six years.
During the same time Flash went from a no scripting (well it was essentially programming via madlibs with Flash 4) to ActionScript 3 (Flex 2, the first place AS3 was used, was in early beta at the time I believe).
New versions of the Flash Player only take a few months to hit 90%+ penetration rates.
as web developers we need to be pushing canvas and font-face and webgl etc and stop running back to propietary plugins every time a font kinda looks not exactly the same on every other machine as mine.
Its pretty unarguable that open standards are fundamentally better than proprietary formats, a single company owning the format the web runs on would be disastrous, instead of opening this gap to push flash into, I think energy is better spent pressuring those involved to help push web standards to a point where flash is not needed, if every website didnt support ie6 tomorrow, next week ie6 would not exist, obviously that is a contrived situation but the fact is its us web developers that need to make sacrifices to make things work better on the users behalf, they cant and shouldnt be expected to do it themselves.
You can push HTML 5 and canvas all you'd like - but from a pure business standpoint if I can reach 98% of my audience with Flash, but only 40% with HTML5/Canvas I'd be an idiot to not choose Flash.
It will be WONDERFUL when I can use canvas to draw realtime graphs and know it will reach 98% of my users. That day is not today and it won't be for some time to come. Now, that being said I and doing exactly that task with canvas for a project - but it's as a backup of the Flash version since the client expects a sizable iPad/iPhone audience.
your "from a pure business standpoint" is exactly what I was referring to, people are far too quickly jumping to quick and ugly fixes like flash that do nothing to help fix the core problems of why web standards are limiting. It takes a lot of "idiots" to push canvas and friends into widespread adoption, I am glad to see people like github taking the initiative.
If you know your audience and can push the technology, by all means go for it! GitHub has exactly that audience. They aren't idiots for going with canvas - for them it's a savvy move. But the Flash option is still there for a reason too.
Often known as Hackromedia, they were not the powerhouse dev. studio it sounds like you're trying to push.
I prefer the present situation, where the experimental envelope-pushing happens in the controlled sandbox of Flash, and only the most vital innovations will eventually trickle down into the HTML standard.
There is a slight possibility that a startup could take on Adobe, but the fact is there are hundreds of books on Adobe CS4/CS3 because they own the industry mindshare.
Wanting Adobe to create tools that output to HTML5 is like asking Porsche to put their engines in bicycles; it doesn't make any sense. Even if you include all the tentative, beta, untested, -webkit-*, or otherwise suggested features for the spec, HTML5 isn't even close to Flash in terms of complete features.
She's tried other free tools, and always ends up finding things that simply can't be done. And then there is the packaging, all together. Everything works together.
And I can appreciate that. A single suite of applications makes it easier to learn, makes it easier to manage, and makes it easier to train others.