Adobe’s Open Screen Project Opens Flash

Adobe's Open Screen Project aims to make Flash a de facto standard on mobile devices by axing license fees to distribute Flash and AIR runtimes, and enabling third-party Flash players.

Adobe wants to make its Flash mutimedia technology a de facto standard on mobile phones and other portable devices, so it has launched its new Open Screen Project which elimiantes all licensing fees associated with distributing Adobe’s own Flash and AIR runtime implementations, and also removes licensing restrictions on its FLV and SWF formats so third parties can build their own Flash players, if they like. Adobe has already liked up a collection of industry heavyweights behind the project, including Samsung, ARM, Nokia, Intel, Qualcomm, Toshiba, and Cisco, as well as media outlets like MTV, NBC Universal, and the BBC.

“Adobe is spearheading the Open Screen Project with support from industry leaders who share a common vision to provide rich, interactive experiences across computers, devices and consumer electronics,” said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, in a statement. “A consistent, more open platform for developers will drive rapid innovation, vastly improving the user experience.”

Although the Open Screen Project does not mean Adobe is taking Flash open source, it does mark the latest move in Adobe’s evolution of the technology from a proprietary, closed platform to a system that supports open standards and encourages third party development. Adobe did release ActionScript source code in late 2006, and has opened up portions of its Web application frameworks and Flex SDK to developers. The Open Screen Project could help create a developer community built around Flash technology that would not only improve the Flash experience on mobile devices, but also on desktop on other platforms where Adobe’s own Flash support has been lagging (e.g., Linux).

Of course, anyone looking to Flash to provide consistent interfaces across a myriad of devices need only look at the consistency of interfaces across Web sites built using Flash: e.g., there is virtually none. However, by empowering developers with a standardized set of tools and capabilities, Adobe may be able to maintain Flash as a ubiquitous technology in the face of challenges from the likes of Microsoft Silverlight, which uses an XML-based format and is already garnering support in the open source community.