Flash is as open as HTML5

Posted by on Apr 22, 2010 in Flash Platform, html5 | 46 comments

How’s that for a controversial title? But… It’s true… Hear me out!

First of all let me say that I have absolutely nothing against HTML5! Innovation and competition is always good and keeps everyone on their toes. UPDATE: I also want to emphasize that this is not a fight. HTML5 and Flash can live together just fine and can even complement each other!

One of the first blog posts I read this morning was one on AppleInsider. An Apple spokeswoman claimed that Adobe’s Mike Chambers got it all backwards when he blogged about Apple’s closed system. That’s not the part that made me cringe though. She said that “it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary“.

Ok… So… Let’s analyze that a little bit… Let’s begin with the biggest claim here: H.264. Last time I checked, H.264 was far from open. It is owned by a private organization known as MPEG LA who said earlier this year that “Internet Video that is free to end users would continue to be exempt from royalty fees until at least December 31, 2015“. Nobody knows what is going to happen after 2015. The patents awarded to MPEG LA don’t expire until 2028. So… to make this clear… H.264 is not open.

So what about HTML5, CSS and JavaScript… Those are open, right? Well yeah. The specs are open meaning that everyone can download those specs and build an application around it to display that language. Hey… Wait a minute… That sounds a lot like Flash! The specs for FLV (Flash video), SWF (the file format for Flash Player), AMF (the binary format for exchanging data) and RTMP (the protocol used for transmission of audio, video, and data) are all published and can be downloaded by anyone.

The specs for HTML5 are decided by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG). The WHATWG was founded by individuals of Apple, the Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software in 2004, after a W3C workshop. Apple, Mozilla and Opera were becoming increasingly concerned about the W3C’s direction with XHTML, lack of interest in HTML and apparent disregard for the needs of real-world authors. Anyone can participate as a Contributor by joining the WHATWG mailing list. The same goes for Flash. Our bugbase is open to anyone and anyone can view bugs and add feature requests.

But the Flash runtime is closed! Ok… Sure… Flash Player is not open source although some parts are. That said… Ask yourself this: Is your browser open source? The only browser that is completely open source is Firefox. Safari is only partly open source (only the WebKit engine). The same can be said about Chrome (in the Chromium project). However, the biggest HTML runtime out there –Internet Explorer (still used by over 50% of all internet users)– is as closed as Flash Player. And so is Opera (even though they are part of the WHATWG).

And with that, I come back to the title of this post: Flash is as open as HTML5 = HTML5 is as open as Flash.

UPDATE: You should also read “HTML5 canvas proprietary Apple technology?” by Leo Bergman and “I’d rather be a Woz” by nothingGrinder. Hat tip to Philippe and Aaron who posted this in the comments.

Note: I’m sure many of you will have some comments on this topic and I have no problem with your comments as long as you keep them constructive and on topic.

Note 2: For those who saw a drop in the comment count: I just disabled and deleted Topsy trackbacks. These are not comments but automatic pingbacks from RTs on Twitter.

(Image credit: Justin Marty)