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 Post subject: Flash Player for armhf
PostPosted: Thu Dec 08, 2011 3:43 pm 
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Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2011 10:24 am
Posts: 30
Is there a version of Flash that works well with Debian armhf?


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Dec 08, 2011 6:44 pm 
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Genesi

Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:28 am
Posts: 409
Location: Finland
Hi.

No, and there might never be one. Since Adobe cancelled Flash for mobile devices (ARM), the chances of having any further development for Flash (mobile or not) are very slim.

It is very clear that the future of the web (not just for mobile devices, but in general), and that of mobile apps, lies with HTML5+CSS+JavaScript.



Johan.

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Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Dec 08, 2011 11:22 pm 
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Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:21 am
Posts: 14
Thats not good. The i.MX515 and i.MX535 do not support VP8 or Theora which are contenders for the <video> tag codec and are supported by Firefox and Chrome.
The SoC does have support for h.264 but leaving the video playing codec for the entire web in the hands of the MPEG-LA is a seriously disturbing proposition.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 1:48 pm 
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Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:39 am
Posts: 9
Location: UK
h.264 is the main contender for the <video> tag given that hardware accelleration exists for it now, in millions of smartphones and cameras. VP8 and Theora on the other hand have basically nil support on devices, are worse than h.264 in encoding speed and quality, and it's unclear as to whether they infringe any existing patents.

The lack of Flash bothers me a lot more than the lack of support for these minor codecs. While HTML5 + Javascript is the future, in the interim there are many websites that are unusable without Flash.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 5:28 pm 
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Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:21 am
Posts: 14
I'd like to pull a paragraph from Arstechnica for this debate:
Quote:
MPEG-LA's license terms for H.264 set out a range of fee schedules depending on the exact nature of the H.264 implementation. Importantly to web users, video that is distributed over the web and which is, importantly, not behind any kind of a paywall, is royalty-free. This means that uploading a video to a site such as YouTube and then rebroadcasting that video to all and sundry is free. For browser developers, the situation is not quite so happy: browsers include H.264 decoders, and these are subject to royalties. The size of the necessary payment depends on the number of units shipped—browsers with fewer than 100,000 users would likely not need to pay a royalty at all—but in any case is capped at $6.5 million (equivalent to about 65 million users), annually, until 2015.

Peter Bright, Arstechnica - Google's dropping H.264 from Chrome a step backward for openness
The MPEG-LA has since waived software license fees until 2015 in an attempt to gain adoption.

Given the current MPEG-LA Fee Schedule Firefox would have to start making royalty payments. I'm fairly sure that Mozilla wouldn't be able to afford that.
Perhaps a rogue patched version Firefox would become viable at that point but how much could one trust these patches? Would GNU/Linux distributions shipping H.264 patched versions of Firefox become subject to legal action?

An Opera opninion on H.264 as the <video> tag codec

We can either play chicken with the MPEG-LA and it's H.264 license fees and give VP8 more time to develop or we can hand web video over to a borderline patent troll now.
Remember, the first hit is free; they'll make their money back when you're addicted. ;)


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