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> this violates the fundmental openness of the SWF format

Since when has the SWF format had "fundamental openness"? It's the exact opposite.

> Since when has the SWF format had "fundamental openness"?

Since approximately the 1st of May, 2008[1]. Adobe publishes a specification of the file format[2], currently at version 10[3]. N.B. The Wikipedia entry suggests[4] that the specification does not exhaustively cover the capabilities of the format.

[1] http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/2008...

[2] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf.html

[3] http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/e...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWF#Licensing

Considering the spec is open and anybody can make a SWF from any program, or use any program to parse and execute a SWF...isn't that the definition of "openness"?

It's Adobe's tools that aren't free or open.

The spec itself, though, is wholly controlled by Adobe. If someone else wanted to go in and make changes to the spec they could not do so. Compare this with HTML, which is definitely an open spec, and you can see the difference. It's like saying .NET is open: it's not, even though Mono exists.

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