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Inside Adobe’s Open Source Framework

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Regarding the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) – for building media players on the Flash Platform, publishers have historically either built their own players or adopted solutions from third parties. There wasn’t a single standard media player, and as a result it was hard to keep up with the latest media playback features, like Dynamic Streaming, and hard to integrate third-party services, like advertising. The goal of OSMF, now in public alpha as an open source project, is to enable developers to easily assemble pluggable components to create high-quality, enhanced playback experiences. Adobe opened up the framework to enable collaborative development for web video monetization, with lower costs and faster turnaround. Because media players are an integration point for multiple providers, OSMF lends itself to an open source project where all parties can cooperatively establish standard interfaces. OSMF is intended to facilitate the development and sharing of open standards and best practices for video player applications built on the Adobe Flash Platform.”

Although OSMF and TLF are being dubbed as “open-source,” there are some key components that will remain proprietary. “OSMF source code and pluggable software components, as well as source code and component library for TLF are available at no charge under the Mozilla Public License,” McAllister says. “Adobe has released a number of technologies into open source, relating to the Flash Platform.” For a complete list, please see Adobe.

OSMF and TLF are not the first Flash technologies Adobe openly released to the developer community. Previous initiatives have consisted of Flex and its compilers, as well as the Tamarin virtual machine. When asked what makes OSMF and TLF different, McAllister states, “The Tamarin project, which is based on code contributed from Adobe, is designed to implement an open engine for ActionScript. Tamarin will be used by Mozilla within the next generation of SpiderMonkey, the core JavaScript engine embedded in Firefox, Mozilla’s free web browser, as well as within the ActionScript Virtual Machine within Adobe Flash Player.”

Flex is a cross platform, open source framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs) that run identically in all major browsers and operating systems. The Flex SDK provides the core Flex compilers, component library and debugger. “Using only the free SDK and IDE of choice, developers can freely build and deploy rich Flex applications,” McAllister says.

TLF is designed to be used with Adobe Flex or Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, and is already included in Flex 4 beta, code named “Gumbo.” Developers can use or extend existing components, or use the open source framework to create their own text components.

OSMF is an AS3 code that runs on version 10 of the Flash Player. Developers can use OSMF in Adobe Flex or Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, as well as in third party tools for ActionScript development, McAllister adds.

Adobe’s new open source initiatives offer many advantages to the web community as a whole. However, there is no denying that developers and end users will benefit the most from these technologies. “OSMF will enable developers to quickly and easily build more robust, feature-rich media players based on the Adobe Flash Platform. The flexible OSMF architecture enables developers to easily create unique playback experiences and help to improve user experience by monitoring & responding to QoS metrics.

Now, developers using Flash Professional or Flex can directly discuss ideas and proposals with project committers, submit code through the open Flex bug and issue tracking system, available at http://bugs.adobe.com/flex, or contribute enhancements directly to the TLF project. By providing the developers access to the ActionScript source code for TLF, they can more easily debug their applications and extend or modify the capabilities of TLF to meet their specific customer requirements. Both OSMF and TLF can be leveraged by Open Screen Project member projects as well as other interested developers, publishers and media companies.”

Moving forward, Adobe is looking to remain active in its open source initiatives and is said to have numerous projects in the works. “Adobe is active in open source projects and activities. We work directly with contributions to existing projects, like SQLite, and Eclipse, and indirectly by supporting Adobe products on open source operating distributions, such as making Adobe Reader and Flash Player available on Linux operating systems. Adobe research and development around other open source projects can be found in the Adobe Source Libraries,” McAllister says.

For a full list of active open source Adobe projects, please visit: http://www.opensource.adobe.com.

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