Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgamache | Hacker News Reader

I really hope this works, but I fear it will die a shumway death. One of the issues is there are two complete run-times inside of Flash. AVM1 (for AS1/2) and AVM2 (for AS3). AS1/2 is much easier to program and probably emulate. AS3 was much more advanced and was actually a pretty good language. Adobe should release the source, but probably doesn't due to all the security holes that probably are waiting to be found. Of course, that is speculation.

[https://github.com/mozilla/shumway] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript]

View on HN

> Adobe should release the source, but probably doesn't due to all the security holes that probably are waiting to be found. Of course, that is speculation.

The AS3 spec, compiler and runtime/VM are all open source, have been since at least 2008 IIRC. Details are in the wikipedia page you linked, third paragraph.

Aside: discussions of Flash or its legacy have an unfortunate tendency to get derailed by FUD, so it would perhaps be useful to avoid speculation like this where possible.

The AS3 VM is helpful, but only part of the player. The fact remains there is no player source to use as a guide for porting to other languages. It’s similar to the .net scenario. MS releases .net core open source, but didn’t release the GUI parts (until recently).

I don't think anyone at Adobe is against open-sourcing the whole player; the problem would be relicensing it. It's a massive, hugely complex project, with lots of chunks that were licensed or written by other parties. And the codebase was probably 10-12 years old before anyone even considered the idea of opening anything...

I definitely agree it'd be hugely useful, and wish it would happen, but I kind of doubt we'll ever see it.

Right. I focused on the security, but it's a legacy code base with legal entanglements. Also created in another era.

They didnt release the GUI cause .NET Core is a rewrite. .NET Framework is only compatible through a common library between .NET Standard. Outside of that as far as I am aware they are similar but different runtimes.

The AS3 VM was opensourced in 2006 (as Tamarin) and donated to Mozilla who planned to use it as a back-end inside Gecko: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarin_(software)

Flash Player contains a host of third party, commercially licensed software inside of it. Its source will never be released and it has nothing to do with security.

> I really hope this works, but I fear it will die a shumway death.

Yes, it may find a niche subset of Flash content it can do well, but there have been many attempts at Flash replacements, and all of them have failed, including serious ones with corporate backing like Shumway. Another cool one is Lightspark [1]

The only real chance at 100% preservation of Flash content is for Adobe to open source all of it - the VMs, the runtime including the graphics, etc. - and to compile that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightspark

Google Swiffy too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Swiffy

Reply on news.ycombinator.com