17 June 2005
Open Source Flex
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Technology .
*Update* Macromedia has released Flex Builder 2 Alpha,
allowing you to create Flex apps sans the server! Amazing stuff, and
its based on Eclipse. You can download it at labs.macromedia.com
As most any of you know, there has been a HUGE buzz lately about the "open source" flash movement. You will see it called FAMES, FLAMES, etc (see Keith’s blog for more info). In essence the flash community is starting to embrace open source alternatives to the old, crummy Flash IDE while also building some of their own compilers and a few other ancillary tools. Ask any flash developer, and I emphasize developer, what their biggest gripe is about the Macromedia package and they will tell you its the IDE… it equates to the Fiat of IDEs. Its clunk and not geared at all towards a programmer.
Slowly the development community, and even Macromedia themselves, are realizing the benefit of projects like the Eclipse project. Which is all well and good, but this means people are just finding better ways to develop Actionscript, they aren’t fundamentally changing what they are programming. Macromedia developed a product called Flex which is aimed at the enterprise and RIA market. It allows developers to separate layout semantics (MXML/AS) from business logic (Java, .Net or even PHP) and never have to open the Flash IDE and create a FLA. From my point of view, this is heaven. If I am a product manager and I am having my crack team of flash developers dive into a project, I would prefer that their time is spent programming… not futzing around with the UI, as always happens in our current development methodology. So why aren’t we at Xplana using and singing the praises of Flex?? the $11,000 price tag, of course. Macromedia has effectively priced companies like ourselves, and there are many, right out of the market and left us to fiddle around with FLAs and AS files.
So with all of this fuss around "open source" flash has no one brought up the idea of building an alternative to the Flex Server? Now I am not talking about Laszlo, as that has its own markup language and uses JS as its scripting language. I am talking about a straight port of Flex Server. The Flex server works as a runtime compiler of MXML, Actionscript and any external SWCs. Currently, all of the technology to work with these formats exists in one form or another, but it hasn’t been put together outside of Macromedia’s walls. This would allow the development community to leverage all of the advantages of Flex, which are many, while not being burdened with the Flex Server costs.
Now I do understand that Macromedia needs to make a buck, and they should, they are a terrific company. But they need to place the cost burden on the proper people and they need to do so in a way that scales with the actual usage of the application beyond just the costs per CPU. At $11,000 they are putting Flex in a place in the market to compete with major application servers, and shutting out the masses of their beloved development community.
I am not the right person to make this happen, but I am hoping that the current momentum within the community to move to open source can carry beyond just bypassing the Flash IDE.
