Brian Crescimanno

Adobe today announced the creation of the Open Screen Project to help facilitate the adoption of Flash and Flash-based technologies on a wide range of platforms. There's plenty of coverage out there today about this initiative--and it's no surprise. For years developers have been calling for an opening up of Flash and it looks like Adobe is ready to give it to us.

The big takeaway: Developers are now free to create their own versions of Flash Player.

First, this is fantastic news for the open source community and projects like Ubuntu who now have the opportunity to create a true "free software" version of the Flash player. Free software purists around the world rejoice!

But there's more to it than just Free Software. Apple's current SLA for the iPhone SDK would not allow Adobe's Flash Player to be ported to the iPhone platform (barring special exception, which I'm not entirely convinced Apple would be unwilling to give). Could Apple develop its own version of Flash Player optimized for the iPhone? The Open Screen Project certainly looks that way--and I honestly can't help but wonder if that's part of the reason Adobe's decided that now is the proper time to announce this project. Given the number of partners (and the conspicuous-in-their-absence-Apple) I'd hesitate to say that the iPhone SDK was a cause for this action; but it certainly may have influenced the timing. One thing's for certain; it very much puts the ball back into Apple's court on the issue of Flash on the iPhone.

I am one of the camp that believes Apple has no interest in seeing Flash on the iPhone. Flash competes too directly with a major Apple technology--Quicktime--for Apple to want to see it there. That said, with the onus now on Apple with regard to Flash on the iPhone, I think the boys at Adobe might have out-maneuvered ol' Steve on this one.

And that might be the most impressive part of it all.

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