Adobe to Open Source Flex

By Greg McNevin

April 30, 2007: Adobe has announced that it will be releasing its rich internet application (RIA) software Flex under the Mozilla Public License, seemingly forcing Microsoft to do the same with its recently released Silverlight technology.

Adobe has had a free Flex software development kit available since June 2006, enabling the construction of rich internet applications by companies as diverse as BMC Software, eBay, salesforce.com, Scrapblog, and Samsung.

Now with the open source release, Adobe says it will give developers full and free access to the Flex source code to contribute and extend the Flex compiler, components and application framework.

The software will be released under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) and includes not just the source to the ActionScript components, but also includes the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers, the ActionScript debugger and the core ActionScript libraries from the SDK.

Overall it includes all of the components needed to create Flex applications that run in any browser, across operating systems such as Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux and also on the desktop using Adobe’s new Apollo.

Also in a bid to attract developers, Microsoft is reportedly planning to open source parts of its new Silverlight browser plug in, which is a direct competitor to Adobe’s Flash. While specifics were not discucssed, according to PCWorld, unnamed sources at Microsoft say that part of Silverlight’s source will be released at next week’s MIX 07 web developer conference.

The move looks to be a direct reaction to Adobe’s open sourcing of Flex, and according to some early commentators, it could give Adobe a run for its money and give it a toehold in the online area before it gets largely locked out by the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Adobe.

More details will come to light at Mix07, Adobe says that Flex open source will be available by the end of 2007.

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