Off Topic - Open source flash support not looking too hopeless?

[Ananda Samaddar <a.k.samaddar@googlemail.com>]

Hi Everyone,

After one of my usual bored web browsing sessions I came across these items:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
http://applications.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=38263&cid=97469

Adobe have opened the source code to their Action Script virtual machine (the Tamarin project) and the main developer of swfdec states in the second link (if it's him) that Flash 8 Video support would be easy to add to swfdec.  What does everyone else think of this?  I personally find it shocking that a proprietary software product has become a de facto web standard.  Surely a FLOSS Flash player would go some way to remedying such a reliance on a proprietary product?  Am I clutching at straws?  We already have Gnash and swfdec but they are as of yet not fully Flash 9 compatible.  Will the Tamarin project be of any use to them?

regards,

Ananda Samaddar