Re: Flash - Academic Licensing and Widget Creation
openoffice was written from the ground up,with its own format. making opensource flash would mean knowing how the flash file is structured. sort of like how the openoffice guys know how .doc works, but a lot more complicated.
Actually, the Flash file format (.swf) is publicly documented by Adobe/Macromedia, and they encourage people to create products that export that format. There are many tools that take advantage of that, includng ones that are Open.
However, the documentation comes with a restriction that one can't use it to create a *player*, so many people avoid looking at that specification, choosing instead to reverse-engineer the format.
The "source" file format used by the Flash IDE (.fla) is *not* documented, however, that's not a huge issue.
There have been several aborted attempts to create an Open "Flash Studio" but none have matured to the quality of the commerical product.
As to us funding the development of something like that, that would have to be a ways off - we're a startup, and unlike most other startups, we have a huge fraction of our capital tied up in hardware inventory. Maybe once we're raking in the big cash...