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Browsers don't support flash, the Flash plugin for a browser supports flash. It's not about the browser, it's about the platform or the operating system.

A Flash SWF is not an executable binary blob. Many parts of the SWF spec are even open.

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Does the openness of the spec even matter when effectively only one party can write and ship a usable plugin for it?

I think so. It's important because people theoretically can write plugins for it.

Writing a Flash player is a lot of work, and there's not much reason to do so if Adobe has most computers covered already.

Gnash, swfdec, lightspark, scaleform, smokescreen and others that I'm forgetting are making progress. Most of them are highly compatible with the simple image and video use cases that dominate well over 95% (at least of my) use of flash.

A third-party cannot ship a flash plugin that supports Hulu. Not working 5% of the time causes nasty support issues.

If by "open" you mean "approximately documented" then yes, it's open. There's a whole mountain of stuff you have to do to even meet part of the spec, and there's a lot left up to interpretation.

It's easier to write a fully HTML5 compliant web browser than it is to write a fully compliant Flash plugin.

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