Adobe’s David McAllister, Director of Open Source and Standards, probably thought he was doing a good thing explaining why Flash is not open sourced, on his blog. 69 comments later and still going strong, he might be having second thoughts. The reason:
“The main reason we can’t release Flash Player as open source is because there is technology in the Player that we don’t own…”
Sounds reasonable except that developers know it is BS. Just open source the unencumbered parts and let the community help you both maintain and improve your platform, as well as engineer around the encumbrances. A typical comment, repeated by many:
“You can open the source code to the parts of the Flash Player you do own. Your commitment to openness sounds imaginary.”
The moral of the story… tell the truth, even if it hurts. There must be some real reason why Adobe doesn’t open source Flash Player. No matter what the reason it would be better to just own up to it. Even if the community disagrees with Adobe’s reasoning, they’ll at least respect the company for being transparent. Read the comments! The alternative is very bad karma!