Adobe has released the SWF file format specification

"Freeing up specs for things that the community has already reverse-engineered makes for good publicity, and eliminates a legal EULA issue that Adobe was likely to lose in court in most countries, but doesn't change anything substantial."

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2008-05/msg00004...

Open specifications do change the landscape.

For all sides involved. For Adobe, for Adobe's commercial competition and current and future Adobe partners, and for the Open Source world.

Having both open file format specifications and competing products perceived to have fewer features or lower quality allows you advantages in product bids. It's a good place to be for Adobe; it's a low-cost variation of the freemium model, and one that Adobe has used before.

Postscript and now PDF have survived in the wild for some years now, though you'll particularly note that the specs for PDF have been a moving target. It is nearly certain you'll see these newly-released specifications evolve over time.

Open specifications can inoculate Adobe against anti-competitive legal proceedings that can arise in various jurisdictions.

It also means that other entities are open to develop both competing and supporting products and to participate in the community without fear of exposure to the (il)legalities of reverse-engineering. And from the technical difficulties and the upgrade- and compatibility-related risks of reverse-engineering -- available specifications make for better open source, and more- and cross-compatible products.

And the release means that an organization that is a sufficiently large target to draw the legal attention of Adobe is not going to get tangled up with Adobe in the process of actually proving that the EULA was unenforceable in various courts.

Yes, Adobe likely has underlying competitive motivations that supported the specification release. They're a commercial entity, and they make money selling software products. Regardless, Adobe appears to have done a good and useful thing for the community.

I'll thank Adobe for releasing the SWF specifications.

Adobe's hope is that opening a platform with 98% penetration will further increase platform acceptance as the standard for rich media on the web.

Think about it from a developers POV - let's say that you're making a choice between two rich media platforms on the web - both proprietary, closed systems that require proprietary plugins and code built on proprietary languages. Tough choice, eh? Maybe you pick the one with a language you're more familiar with, or one thats been really hyped recently.

Now consider a slightly different scenario: What if you had to choose between an open, standardized platform built on an open language with open-source tools that can create applications that run on the web in any browser or your mac, windows or linux desktop. How does that compare with the proprietary choice?

Adobe has consistently moved towards an open solution both for its development tools and its platform, no doubt in response to competitive threats. Microsoft is trying to inch that way as well but seems a step behind.