Flex to be open sourced

Adobe has announced that Flex would be open sourced. This is a good development for RIA Platform developers. It opens the Flash Platform and Apollo for developers.

Adobe Apollo Alpha is released! go get it!

Adobe labs has released the alpha version of Apollo along with some sample applications include RSS Reader, Map App etc.

I just downloaded and played with it.. While the application looks just like a desktop app, I feel that adobe should launch much more jazzy apps to catch the fancy of the web 2.0 developer community. Hope that lot more would be coming from apollo.

AllPeers Goes Open Source

AllPeers is a Mozilla Plug-in that allows the users to have IM, File Sharing functionalities within the browser itself. It is developed in XUL. However they are not releasing the server version open source. All the clients would be connecting to the AllPeers server for file sharing etc.

I showed the app to couple of my friends. They like the idea, but want a cross platform solution which works across browsers and also in mobile because file sharing would be happening between devices also.. So Single Platform would be a difficult proposition.

With several solution providers competing for this space and releasing products in a flurry, things are getting interesting..

After Ajax

Web-Desktop Integration is seen as the next step after Ajax. There is already a flurry of activity happening in this space. Adobe's Apollo, Microsoft's WPF/E, Parakeet and many other approaches all are setting released one after another. Dojo Offline is also getting mature. So the ball has started to roll for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).

The Web Community might not be foolish this time to choose a proprietory solution like Apollo or WPF/E. Discussions have already started on the web and web community is already getting alerted to the situation.

Why Open is Good and How Open Could Be Good for Flash and Adobe wants to be the Microsoft of the Web are pointers in this direction.

The most damning argument regarding microsoft and adobe comes from techcrunch. It says "Adobe is both a platform company and an application company. Conflicts are not avoidable".

I am just hoping that an firefox equivalent of RIA platform prevails, and startups have a field day.