💌 The letter to Adobe.

[pakastin]

First I want to thank everyone involved in this petition. People have mixed feelings about Flash and I fully understand that. I just hope everyone gets the point that we don't want to preserve Flash player as is.

To the point: I'm about to write the letter to Adobe. Do you have ideas about it? I'd like to keep it short and formal. I will also need some help proofreading it, because I'm not professional English speaker.

Thanks! ♥️

[ghost]

I'd love to help you with writing the letter and its points, as well as the grammar and such.

[pakastin]

Here's the initial version now: https://github.com/pakastin/open-source-flash/blob/master/the-letter-to-adobe-%5BWIP%5D.md

[ghost]

Your letter only mentions flash, have you sent it yet because your letter needs to include shockwave and director as well.

[pakastin]

No I haven't, feel free to pull request 😉

[pakastin]

Btw. What's the difference between Shockwave and Director? Or are they the same thing?

[ghost]

Adobe flash for internet explorer and firefox is called shockwave flash like how macromedia originally branded it, I'm referring to shockwave DIR/DCR files made in director. It's a different file format used to make games when flash was known for movies only. Both were owned by macromedia before adobe bought the company.

[Brian151]

@pakastin
Director is the IDE for DIR/DXR/DCR files, Shockwave is the browser plugin that plays DCR.

[lesmana]

here is my suggestion for a (very rough) draft for the letter:

dear adobe,
flash has played a substantial role in shaping the internet how we know it today. (then list some examples where flash really was groundbreaking: youtube for video streaming. notable games or game websites like kongregate. or early memes like ytmnd).

when future generation try to understand how the internet came to be and how it shaped us as a society they will need flash technology to access most of the content from 2000 to 20015 (?) (the years where flash was hype).

now you have decided to kill flash. (better, more ellegant wording for this). that means people in the future will no longer be able to access flash content. and future generation will no longer be able to understand a substantial part of internet culture history.

projects like the internet achive (https://archive.org/) are trying to preserve parts of todays internet for future generations. (name other projects trying to archive the internet?) but it is of little use to preserve the content when we can't also present the content to future generations.

even today many people already use devices which cannot play flash content (smartphones). who knows what technology or devices people will use in the future?

this is where you can help. by releasing all flash technology under a free license you can help us to adapt the technology to future devices so that future generation can still enjoy flash content and understand how the internet and our culture was shaped by this technology.

(maybe name example like doom where the free source code helped preserve the game so it is still playable today on practically all devices).

(then some formalities)

what do you think?

[lesmana]

@pakastin please decide about my draft. two thumbs up and no votes against. should i submit a pull request with my draft?

[jens1o]

@lesmana Please understand that he is busy with a new family member and his daily jobs. :)

[pakastin]

No worries, @lesmana just submit the pull request 😉