Adobe Shares Flex

It seems Adobe is really embracing the open source business model — they plan on releasing major components of their Flex framework in the coming months under an open source license. They will be releasing:

• The compiler
• The debugger
• An automated testing framework
• Core libraries (with Apollo components)
• Build scripts

Flex is an application framework for developing “rich” Internet applications — like AJAX, except it uses Flash instead of JavaScript. An example of Flex in action can be seen on Google Finance.

What they’ve done is make the guts of of the technology available. Their intention is to continue selling their development tools, much like what they do with their PDF and ActionScript technology. So while competing tools might emerge later, they’ll have a nice long head start and the brand recognition.

This was also necessary due to the fact that AJAX is already out there, and it is based entirely on open standards. So while Flex is technically more able, the added cost of going proprietary would have likely stunted its growth. Adobe needed Flex to take off soon because Microsoft is expected to release its own proprietary competitor in the coming months called Silverlight. Open sourcing this was the best way to ensure their technology could take off — an important prerequisite in selling their development tools. 😉 

While this is good news, it’s probably a nail in the coffin for OpenLaslo, which is now competing directly against Adobe.

The Flex web site can be found here. If you’re really interested, you can check out Microsoft’s Silverlight page. Of course, you have to have it installed to be able to view their video about it. Yep, Microsoft being dumb as usual. Really makes me want to deploy it in my application (not).