Gnash

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Gnash

Developer:	Rob Savoye
Latest release:	0.7.2 / November 17, 2006
OS:	Cross-platform
Use:	Media player
License:	GNU General Public License
Website:	http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

Gnash is a project which aims to create a player and browser plugin for the Adobe Flash file format which is free software, replacing the proprietary software niche currently occupied by Adobe Flash Player.

Gnash is a fork of the GameSWF project, the source code of which is in the public domain. The primary distribution terms for Gnash are those of the GNU General Public License, but code developed by the Gnash project which might be useful in GameSWF will be placed in the public domain.^[1]

The project was first announced by software developer John Gilmore. Its main developer is Rob Savoye.

1 History
2 Technical details
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Writing a free software Flash player has been a priority of the GNU project for some time. Before the launch of Gnash, the GNU project asked for people to assist the GPLFlash project.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Technical details

Gnash requires either AGG, Cairo, or OpenGL for rendering. In contrast to most GNU projects, which are typically written in C, Gnash is written in C++.

Currently, some of the platforms Gnash is able to be compiled and run on are: x86, AMD64, MIPS/Irix, and PowerPC Linux and Net-/Open-/FreeBSD. Adobe does not provide an official player for any of the platforms listed above except Linux on x86. As yet an integrated port exist for RISC OS, which never had Macromedia/Adobe Flash support,^[2] and an unintegrated port for BeOS, where support terminated at Version 4.^[3]

Currently the player can play Flash files, called SWF, up to version 7 and some of SWF 8–9 (most Flash on the web is SWF 7 or up^{[citation needed]}). The current development versions can also play .flv videos if ffmpeg or GStreamer are installed and Gnash is compiled against them. As of April 02 2007, Gnash is more or less capable of properly displaying videos in sites such as YouTube. Most other free software Flash players can only play up to SWF 4. The current version of Adobe Flash Player for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and x86 GNU/Linux can play any SWF version, including SWF 9.