The release of Gnash 0.8.8 met with a generally favourable response. Here are a couple of more detailed reviews:

• http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/08/gnash-088-a-huge-improvement-o.html
• http://www.webupd8.org/2010/08/gnash-088-claims-to-support-all-youtube.html

Six months ago I published a list of possible improvements for Gnash 0.8.8. The list was:

1. Reliable text handling.
2. BitmapData draw() function.
3. RTMP.
4. Dynamic focal gradients, gradient spread and interpolation modes.
5. Playback of obfuscated SWFs.
6. Direct conversion of SWF to video using ffmpeg.

The bad news first: only one of the list made it into 0.8.8. This was the gradient item, where focal gradients and spread modes are now implemented.

The release of Gnash 0.8.8 brings various improvements to rendering, ActionScript execution, compatibility, and flexibility.

But the most significant change is more of a removal than an addition: Gnash no longer has any AVM2 code. AVM2, the ActionScript Virtual Machine introduced in the Flash player 9, is increasingly used in new Flash movies.

It was becoming clear that the original implementation (started in about 2006) of the newer ActionScript Virtual Machine was fundamentally flawed. So fundamentally that it was obstructing code for the old virtual machine without any benefit to Gnash at all.

Gnash features in the Safe Surfing CD distributed free by the German Computer BILD magazine.

The safety organization TÜV Rheinland and the Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik) were involved in the CD's development.

Now Gnash is part Adobe Flash's rich developer ecosystem ...

The page, "the Truth about Flash", claims:

Finally, the Flash Platform has a rich developer ecosystem of both open and proprietary tools and technologies, including developer IDEs and environments such as FDT, IntelliJ, and haXe; open source runtimes such as Gnash; and open source video servers such as Red5.
[2010-05-17]

Ein gewisses Riesensoftwareunternehmen aus den USA betreibt momentan in München eine Werbekampagne mit dem Slogan "Münchener, trennt euch". Nun ja, ein bissl provokativ ist es, nur man sieht aus der Ferne die Webadresse nicht, die dazu gehört. Was kann das denn bedeuten?

Aber nachdem ich heute Werbepost bekommen habe, wurde es mir klarer: Microsoft will mit dem Werbespruch Hardware verkaufen.

The news that the BBC has started "encrypting" its RTMP streams came, in one of those coincidences, just as I'd decided to work on adding RTMP support to Gnash. So even when Gnash's RTMP video streaming works, it will still be legally difficult, if not impossible, for licence fee payers who care about software freedom to use the BBC's iPlayer.

Gnash will certainly be better in six months for our next release. It already has one major new feature - LocalConnection support - and RTMP video streaming is also planned.

But as Gnash is currently unfunded, many important features that could easily be added will be left out.

Here is an incomplete list of things that I can improve or newly implement in Gnash in a relatively short space of time (between 1 and 4 weeks):

1. Reliable text handling (HTML text, text formatting, positioning etc). Currently this is not correct and fails in many cases.
2. BitmapData functions. Rendering to an internal buffer for use in ActionScript. This is used for image handling in many SWF8 movies.
3. RTMP. A basic implementation for video streaming and remoting should be ready for 0.8.8. But ironing out bugs and getting a really high-quality implementation will take longer.

I wanted, on an impulse, to find out about the prominence of Free Software in the UK. Political support for Free Software occasionally makes the headlines, but how much of a presence does it have in everyday IT?

How would anyone try to find out about Free Software? By turning to the internet, of course! So I want to know what they would encounter. I used a well-known search engine to look for Free Software activity in the UK, and this is what I found:

Flash is neither free nor open. Despite Adobe's publicity efforts, its Open Screen project, and its attempt to document various parts of the Flash specifications, it is still closed and restricted.

Flash's lack of freedom is a combination of three things:

1. it needs a closed player
2. its sources are closed
3. it is served in binary format over the internet