Talk:SWF

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the SWF article.
Please sign and date your posts using four tildes (~~~~). New discussion topics go at the bottom of the page; click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Frequently asked questions. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.	Talk page guidelines Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Don't bite the newcomers!

It is requested that a photograph or photographs be included in this article to improve its quality.

How can Wikipedia state that Flash is an open format given that Macromedia pulled all copies of its license for the open format (version 4) from its web site about a year after it declared it open; and replaced it with a newer license (like the one referred to from the official reference page mentioned by the wiki entry), that contains this clause:

"Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF."

In other words, only Macromedia can produce flash players.

Surely that isn't really open, in that case?

-- The sentence:

"SWF is an open format, and anyone can implement authoring software without having to pay royalties."

I had the same point earlier on and I deleted that sentence too. Weird how it's come back again? It's definitely not true, so why feed misinformation? I'm taking it out.

[edit] Open Format Topic

Way too much effort is spent proving how a SWF does not strictly conform to Open Format guidelines - nearly half the article. Perhaps the entire last half of the article can be shortened into a single paragraph that reads something like, "SWF is not, strictly speaking, an open format as indicated by the Flash Player License <insert link>. Third party software can be produced to create SWF files using Macromedia's Flash File Format specifications but these specifications cannot be used to create a SWF interpreter." Thoughts? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.186.168.52 (talk • contribs) 19:58, 1 November 2005.

The question of formats is pretty important. i'm not an expert on this, but i would guess that explaining things in terms of copyright and/or software patents might help clarify things. The latter only apply in the USA, but many parts of the "free world" such as the EU have refused software patents, and i don't see how someone can copyright a format. In fact, i'm not quite sure how a format whose specification is published on the www can be non-open - unless the idea is that anybody who reads the file carries out an implied contract with Adobe and the terms of that contract include not writing an SWF interpreter? That probably explains the comment about reverse engineering - anyone is free to download N different SWF files and reverse engineer them to discover the content from the "secret" document. Or someone could look at the various tools for creating SWF files and work out how to invert them to read SWF files. But if s/he has clicked on the SWF specification document, then s/he has implicitly signed a document saying that s/he agrees not to write an SWF interpreter. Hard to believe that such a restriction could be legal, but i guess that's the legal world we live in for the moment. Boud 23:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SWF in Wikimedia projects

Why is the SWF file format not used in Wikimedia projects? --84.61.4.227 13:50, 3 December 2006 (UTC)