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Flash Player AVM open sourced to Mozilla

ActionScript Virtual Machine is what caused the massive speed increase in Flash Player 9, translating actionscript to run at machine native speeds. Today, Adobe announced that this part of the Flash Player has been contributed to Mozilla Foundation.

This will eventually mean impressive speed increases for AJAX and other JavaScript based software, probably in the same magnitude as the ones we got with Flash Player 9. It's important to note that this is not the same as Open Sourcing the Flash Player, but it's a great move by Adobe.

Here's some nice quotes from the official press release:

"Adobe's work on the new virtual machine is the largest contribution to the Mozilla Foundation since its inception," said Brendan Eich, chief technology officer, Mozilla Corporation, and creator of JavaScript. "Now web developers have a high-performance, open source virtual machine for building and deploying interactive applications across both Adobe Flash Player and the Firefox web browser. We're excited about joining the Adobe and Mozilla communities to advance ECMAScript."

"This is a major milestone in bringing together the broader HTML and Flash development communities around a common language, and empowering the creation of even more innovative applications in the Web 2.0 world," said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe. "By working with the open source community we are accelerating the adoption of a standard language for creating and delivering richer, more interactive experiences that work consistently across PCs and mobile devices."

(via Ryan Stewart)

More details at Tinic Uro's blog

Written by Jens C Brynildsen (November 2006)