Document startups in chaos as Adobe discontinues Flashpaper | Hacker News Reader

Document startups in chaos as Adobe discontinues Flashpaper

uk.techcrunch.com

23 pointsdanw17 comments

I think scribd implements their own flash app to view documents. So they should be ok.

Let me add that again, this goes to show that depending on a vendor for an important technology in your startup can actually be risky. Using open standards are always the way to go.

Using open standards are always the way to go.

Well, no. Certainly not "always". You're absolutely right about the big risk, but sometimes the reward is worth the risk. Selling Photoshop plugins means being dependent on Adobe's decisions, but that doesn't mean you should go into business selling Gimp plugins instead.

What you have to do is keep the risk firmly in mind, and hedge it. Pay your insurance premiums.

Awesome & funny, this is why I love this site. Gimp plugins! ROFL

And there I was, hopeful that people would stop submitting the scribd links because of this development. Oh well.

This is an opportunity for Scribd, they can now offer their iPaper for the affected companies (excepting competition, I guess).

This is not actually a problem, as everyone identified this risk during due dilligence when they were getting funded. Right?

I may be wrong, but my understanding of the technology was that Scribd iPaper is a wrapper over Flashpaper. I remember reading that somewhere, but can't be sure ...

I think there's a lesson to be learnt here, even though it might be a boring one: Don't be dependant on the newest and fanciest technology - you never know when it will be discontinued. Stick to cobol ;-)

Repeat with me:

"I will never, ever, even think of betting my company´s future on another company´s product"

Zero risk is easy to understand and makes nice slogans, but there's money to be made in managing non-zero risk.

There is zero risk and infinite risk. Betting your company on another company and having no exit strategy available (or possible) may be lucrative, for some time, but, in the end, may prove quite painful.

My advice would be to manage the non-zero risk and ride the other company for as long as you can, but keep Plan-B always in hand.

Any response yet from the scribd folks?

They are no longer using Macromedia's Flashpaper. They have their own in-house iPaper technology. Hence, they are not affected by this news.

Scribd... [is] not affected by this news.

If this is so, then Scribd's PR person really needs to write TechCrunch every fifteen minutes until the site puts up a bigger correction. Just marking up the word "Scribd" in the story with a strikethru is nowhere near enough. A lot of readers might miss that detail. Others, like me, will see it but have no idea why it's there. And even if you recognize that they've been crossed out, just mentioning Scribd in this context is to associate them with something bad. As it stands, the article is the textual equivalent of a politician saying "Many public figures have fatal illnesses, but I would never accuse my opponent of having Lou Gehrig's Disease."

The fact that the word "Scribd" even appeared in that story calls for the removal of their name from the main story and the addition of a full blown, fall-on-our-sword, "We screwed up and didn't check our facts; Scribd has nothing to do with this story; we regret the error" apology at the end. This is nothing to be sly about.

I think you're overestimating the significance of a TC story :-P

Hehehe, this is what happens when you use proprietary, standardless, single-implementation products. Stay away from evil apps and you're not at any single company's mercy.

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