Some of the employees from Mozilla flabbergast me. I realize that they want to be seen as defenders of the open web but I think posts like this, by Asa Dotzler, and statements like this, from Tristan Nitot, show that they’re not interested in being constructive. Rather than engaging with companies like Microsoft and Adobe, parts of Mozilla seem to be hell bent on criticizing us at every turn despite the moves towards openness that both companies are making. The web is not under attack. In fact, I think you could make a very valid case that Adobe and Microsoft have helped light a fire under standards bodies to help get things like the video tag implemented in HTML5. The web is too big for any company to control and treating it as a something so fragile it could be taken away or broken by any combination of proprietary technologies does it a huge disservice. The web is a big place and one of the things that makes it great is that it spans so many companies, ideas, and underlying philosophies. That said, Adobe is always working to be a better web citizen, so I take it personally when what we do seems to get dismissed so quickly by people who say they support the open web.
Dave McAllister has a great post about how much Adobe is opening up. Can you flip a switch at a big company and open source everything? Absolutely not. But we’re getting more open. Having the SWF spec open means that even if Adobe goes away tomorrow, theoretically someone can implement the spec and ensure SWF content still renders. Is it the same as open source? No, but it’s a big step. Adobe also has made the open web a core part of our technologies. I don’t know why Asa is comparing Adobe AIR and Silverlight, but one of the great things about AIR is that it lets you use all of those open web technologies (HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc) to create desktop applications. Included in Adobe AIR is WebKit, arguably one of the most innovative and advanced HTML rendering engines out there. Adobe wants to be on the cutting edge when it comes to Flash AND HTML with our technologies. We’ve open sourced projects like BlazeDS, the ActionScript Virtual Machine (which we contributed to help improve JavaScript performance), and Flex, one of our core technologies.
Diversity in ideas is one of the great things about the web. And I like the fact that there are so many people willing to speak up about the importance of the open web. But scaremongering and implying that Adobe is trying to take over the web is silly and ridiculous. The web can’t be taken over. It’s a thriving ecosystem that we’re all a part of – open and proprietary. Innovation comes in many forms and we can all learn from each other. Adobe works differently than Mozilla, that’s just the way it is. But frankly, when you dismiss what we’re doing with an “our way or the highway” attitude, you make it harder on those of us inside these big companies trying to push in a more open direction.
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