Two open source alternatives to Flash Player

[steven36]

Adobe will end support for Flash Media Player in 2020, but there are still a lot of Flash videos out there that need to be watched. Here are two open source alternatives that are trying to help.

 

 

In July 2017, Adobe sounded the death knell for its Flash Media Player, announcing it would end support for the once-ubiquitous online video player in 2020. In truth, however, Flash has been on the decline for the past eight years following a rash of zero-day attacks that damaged its reputation. Its future dimmed after Apple announced in 2010 it would not support the technology, and its demise accelerated in 2016 after Google stopped enabling Flash by default (in favor of HTML5) in the Chrome browser.

 

Even so, Adobe is still issuing monthly updates for the software, which has slipped from being used on 28.5% of all websites in 2011 to only 4.4.% as of August 2018. More evidence of Flash’s decline: Google director of engineering Parisa Tabriz said the number of Chrome users who access Flash content via the browser has declined from 80% in 2014 to under eight percent in 2018.

Although few* video creators are publishing in Flash format today, there are still a lot of Flash videos out there that people will want to access for years to come. Given that the official application’s days are numbered, open source software creators have a great opportunity to step in with alternatives to Adobe Flash Media Player. Two of those applications are Lightspark and GNU Gnash. Neither are perfect substitutions, but help from willing contributors could make them viable alternatives.

Lightspark

Lightspark is a Flash Player alternative for Linux machines. While it’s still in alpha, development has accelerated since Adobe announced it would sunset Flash in 2017. According to its website, Lightspark implements about 60% of the Flash APIs and works on many leading websites including BBC News, Google Play Music, and Amazon Music.

Lightspark is written in C++/C and licensed under LGPLv3. The project lists 41 contributors and is actively soliciting bug reports and other contributions. For more information, check out its GitHub repository.

GNU Gnash

GNU Gnash is a Flash Player for GNU/Linux operating systems including Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian. It works as standalone software and as a plugin for the Firefox and Konqueror browsers.

Gnash’s main drawback is that it doesn’t support the latest versions of Flash files—it supports most Flash SWF v7 features, some v8 and v9 features, and offers no support for v10 files. It’s in beta release, and since it’s licensed under the GNU GPLv3 or later, you can help contribute to modernizing it. Access its project page for more information. 

Want to create Flash?

*Just because most people aren't publishing Flash videos these days, that doesn't mean there will never, ever be a need to create SWF files. If you find yourself in that position, these two open source tools might help:

• Motion-Twin ActionScript 2 Compiler (MTASC): A command-line compiler that can generate SWF files without Adobe Animate (the current iteration of Adobe's video-creator software).
• Ming: A library written in C that can generate SWF files. It also contains some utilities you can use to work with Flash files. 

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Clearly, there’s an opening for open source software to take Flash Player’s place in the broader market.

 

Source

[brain_death]

Good to see this old chestnut back on the table. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried these ‘alternative’ players, but they are pretty crap. I never had any success with Lightspark from an installation point of view, though I note there was a point release in 2017 after more than four years silence. Gnash is more workable and for a while you feel proud, but it only really supports up to Flash v7 (2003) with hints of v8 & v9, which was when ActionScript 3 made an appearance (2006). If you like blurry video and out-of-sync sound you’ll love it, but even quite rudimentary interactivity depends nowadays on AS3.

 

Several years back, my last round of research revealed very few non-Adobe programs for Flash development, beyond bits of AS2 and basic animations you could do better with an animated GIF. If anything the situation has worsened, but not to worry. There are few reasons to use Flash for development purposes anymore, but there is a vast heritage of Flash on the Internet that won’t be allowed to disappear. In May 2012, Adobe stopped development of the Flash Player for Linux with v11.2. In response, everyone just switched to Chromium and PepperFlash, which kept up the Adobe release cycle. The quality is indistinguishable and security concerns are regularly addressed as before.

 

So very quietly at the end of 2016, Adobe started updating the Flash Player for Linux again with v24.0.0.186, a practice that has continued until today and v30.0.0.154. You need to remember that prior to the irrational impulses of any man in the throes of terminal pancreatic cancer, developers were actively encouraged to use Flash. A large part of society’s heritage cannot and will not be allowed to vanish, even if this means Adobe needs to officially, open-source the plugin themselves. With a bit of know-how and perseverance I have Flash running on my Android phone under the Dolphin browser. For i-Diots out there, there is always Puffin.

 

[steven36]

On 9/8/2018 at 11:34 PM, brain_death said:

Good to see this old chestnut back on the table. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried these ‘alternative’ players

I used something  like them before , for years. Linux didn't have the same version of flash windows had  while windows versions got new features  Linux version got only security updates ..So  I used pepper flash with freshplayer  for it too work in all browsers witch would give me latest version of flash . Now Linux has the same version of flash as windows and  i never use flash no more in windows or Linux, i have Kodi,  Send to mpv  and html5  that covers everything i do streaming . its like BBC i have that in Kodi and also a app i got from giveaways that has it and i have better free alternatives than paying for Google Play Music, and Amazon Music..

[brain_death]

Well, I don't really have the time to watch movies, though I do enjoy sports sometimes. I appreciate your update on what folk do nowadays and know we share a similar passion, for open-source software and Linux. As you may have guessed, I spent a lot of time developing in Flash way back when. Naturally, I'm not enjoying seeing it go down the pan, because so many people abused this platform for the very reasons it is now, becoming extinct.