Adobe opensources Flex (Exclusive Videos with Adobe)
This morning I met with several members of the Adobe Flex team. — Official News on Adobe's Site about Flex going Open Source. — I have two videos of our conversation: — 1. Video of our conversation this morning.
Context & Ripple Effects
Adobe entered 2007 expanding its platform reach with a public alpha of Apollo, a framework for cross-platform hybrid web/desktop applications. Adobe and Microsoft were already positioned as the principal RIA-platform rivals as developers began experimenting with their tools.
Making Flex source available turns a proprietary development framework into a more inspectable and adaptable part of Adobe's platform strategy, broadening the terms on which developers can evaluate it.
First-order effects
- Flex developers gain access to the framework's source code, giving them more ability to inspect and adapt the tooling they use.
- Adobe trades exclusive control of Flex's implementation for a wider route to developer adoption and outside participation.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's RIA tooling faces a competitor whose framework can be evaluated and modified more openly, increasing pressure to compete on developer experience and platform capabilities.
- Teams choosing RIA tools can weigh source access alongside runtime and application-development features, making lock-in a more visible purchasing consideration.
Third-order effects
- If developers reward open frameworks, RIA vendors' defensibility shifts away from closed tooling and toward the runtimes, ecosystems, and application services surrounding it.
- Adobe's move points to platform competition in which source availability becomes a lever for ecosystem formation rather than merely a licensing choice.
The trend: RIA platforms are competing for developer allegiance by opening parts of their toolchains while concentrating differentiation in the broader platform ecosystem.