An open letter to Adobe
July 15th, 2008 by marcel
Hello, oh great and powerful Adobe people.
Thank you so much for releasing Flash Player 10 beta 2 for Linux. Thanks even more for (finally) building in support for video4linux2 Webcam technology. You have no idea how much we appreciate that. The only problem is that many (if not most) of us can't use it. You see, it crashes our browsers within seconds.
Reading earlier posts on this subject, it's obvious that Adobe is aware of this problem (Flash player 10 beta 2 crashing Firefox) and that they have fixed it in-house. I think I speak for more than just myself when I say, "Please, just let us have the fixed version." You don't know how long we've waited for video4linux2 support. The suspense is killing us. Besides, it's kind of rough to be told that a beta is available with said features, then not have it work. It's even harder when we are told it's fixed by we can't possibly have it. So, please. Please. Let us have the current fixed version. We know it's not the real, final product, but we accept that. It's cool. Really. What do you say? Come on, guys. One little tiny fixed beta? No one is going to complain. In fact, we'll say nothing but nice things about you. Really.
What do you say?
Please. Pretty please . . .
__________________________
Marcel (Writer and Free Thinker at Large) Gagné
www.marcelgagne.com AND www.cookingwithlinux.com
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Works justtttttt fine in
On July 15th, 2008 George P Burdell (not verified) says:
Works justtttttt fine in Opera 9.51.
Ever since I left Firefox when 2.x mugged my computer for RAM more than I could stand any longer, I've had all these nice fringe benefit feature benefits.
- Speed Dial
- Integrated good Feed Reader
- Integrated good EMail
And now working Flash 10 Beta 2.
I also thought it was very
On July 15th, 2008 jbs (not verified) says:
I also thought it was very funny. Yes, it was over the top just enough. Your article intrigued me and I had to try for myself. I downloaded the .tar version and extracted it. The installer didn't work for me but I copied the .so file into my plugins folder of Firefox install and it works fine. Went to a few sites to check it out. I have Shockwave Flash 10.0.0 d525 installed. My Firefox is a nightly, Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:2.0a1pre) Gecko/2008060602 Minefield/4.0a1pre. I use Zenwalk 5.2 distro.
john
Pathetic
On July 15th, 2008 Anonymous (not verified) says:
What you want to say is good, it's even true. But how you wrote your letter is pathetic. You are almost crying ... Adobe is not God, it's just another company. We, I or you are not their slaves, and begging them looks hilarious.
So, please don't send your letter to them, even if you are right.
PS: By the way, I use Opera 9.52 and I had little problems with FlashPlayer 10 beta 2. Beta 1 was working pretty well too...
re: Pathetic
On July 15th, 2008 marcel says:
It's meant to be funny. I was hoping the letter was so over the top, that I didn't really need to include smileys after every period. Subtlety, it seems, is indeed lost on the Web. [ insert appropriate smiley here ]
--Marcel
__________________________Marcel (Writer and Free Thinker at Large) Gagné
www.marcelgagne.com AND www.cookingwithlinux.com
Pie in the face
On July 15th, 2008 António Manuel Dias (not verified) says:
Maybe it's the pie in the face generation. They don't understand any other kind of humor.
Using V4L2 camera diagnostic?
On July 15th, 2008 John Dowdell (not verified) says:
Hi, in your post I didn't see mention of Mike Melanson's recent request for assistance in Linux webcam testing... have you seen this yet, and does it help?
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/07/paparazzi_v2_1.html
jd/adobe
re: Using V4L2 camera diagnostic
On July 15th, 2008 marcel says:
Hello John,
Thanks for replying. I did, in fact, reply with my own diagnostics. You'll see my name there in the list (Marcel Gagne) of people submitting their camera diagnostics. And no, it did not help -- at least I can't see how it would. I appreciate the work that's involved, but my 'beef' with this (so to speak) is that the second beta released crashes a huge number of systems (which I understand is a processor issue and a bug that crept in between beta 1 and beta 2) and that you (Adobe) already have a fix that would resolve these crashes. All of this is in the Adobe forums. I obviously want support for the majority of V4L2 cameras (mine included) but I'd like to be able to use what's there in Beta 2 with relative stability.
-- Marcel
__________________________Marcel (Writer and Free Thinker at Large) Gagné
www.marcelgagne.com AND www.cookingwithlinux.com
Okay, so you did see Mike's
On July 15th, 2008 John Dowdell (not verified) says:
Okay, so you did see Mike's request for helping testing different Linux webcam implementations. I hadn't seen the link to source info in the original post, that's why I asked.
So it sounds like you're asking for nightly builds, or something more frequent than Adobe's current preview system... is that the core request?
jd/adobe
re; Nightly builds
On July 16th, 2008 marcel says:
As you put it, "So it sounds like you're asking for nightly builds, or something more frequent than Adobe's current preview system... is that the core request?"
Yes, that would be a great start. In the case of the release 10, beta 2 product, those nightly builds would have fixed the annoying crash on a great number of systems while providing users with the functionality offered by that release. Besides, the concept of nightly (or frequent) releases works exceedingly well in the open source world (and yes, I know Flash player is not open source). By releasing often, you provide a mechanism whereby your developers can benefit with regular feedback from the very people they, and Adobe, are trying to reach. It also creates an environment where your users are actually seeing changes in the product that responds to their needs and problems rather than the excruciatingly annoying "Honest, we are working on it, and someday, we promise to release something that you'll really, really like. Usually, after that statement, users wait, and wait, and . . . well, you get the idea.
As much as we, Linux users and the open source community would love to see Adobe open up Flash, Adobe could still reap a great deal of good karma by just involving us, even if that means showing us what you are working on in a timely fashion and quickly fixing bugs that crash your core software (in this case, browsers like Firefox). You'll actually be creating a product users want and need, and you'll get great feedback.
-- Marcel
__________________________Marcel (Writer and Free Thinker at Large) Gagné
www.marcelgagne.com AND www.cookingwithlinux.com
I thought it was funny
On July 15th, 2008 Carlie Fairchild says:
:)
__________________________Carlie Fairchild is the publisher of Linux Journal.
CRAP
On July 15th, 2008 Shawn Powers says:
It was humor?
Now I have to tear down my Adobe idol.
[Hmmm... what company to worship now...]
__________________________Shawn Powers is the Associate Editor for Linux Journal. You might find him chatting on the IRC channel.
Me too.
On July 15th, 2008 Anonymous (not verified) says:
:-)
(Oh, boy... Don't some people still have 4.7MHz 8080 processors for a brain?)