[osflash] RIAForge

[Nicolas Cannasse]

>>I wonder if projects are subject to screening -- what would Adobe do
>>when a project like Red5 comes along. Don't think the legal department
>>would be very happy if they are seen as supporting development of
>>something they might want to challenge as an infringement of their IP
>>later on.
> 
> 
> Not sure. I submitted a test project yesterday to try out the system  
> and it says that "they" will review it and get back to you. I'm  
> assuming "they" here is Adobe since the domain name is registered by  
> Adobe. I couldn't find any information on what criteria they will be  
> using to approve or disapprove projects.

Yes, that's exactly this kind of lack of transparency and accountability
I was talking about. Being "open" is a good thing, and it's a good thing
if Flash users can have more choices for the place of their repository,
although I think that there's already enough choices with what's
currently available.

Now, if you think a little bit, RIAForge could be used as an
Adobe-filtered list of open source projects that matches a certain
number of political rules. This could prevent some OSFlash projects from
being accepted there if Adobe feel they are somehow competiting with
their own products. I can think about Red5 (FCS) or FlashDevelop (Flex2)
for example.

That might not be the case, but there is not warranty that this new
website will be independant and be able to keep up with the internal
presures since even if it's not owned by Adobe, it's ran by some of its
employees.

I think that when you want to be "open", you have to be independant in
order to be able to clear any doubt about your motivations and the
future evolution of your software/website.

Nicolas