Mike Potter says there is lots of good news behind the Flex 2 launch for open source developers. Giving an in-depth look into the free launch in his blog, Mike explains that the goal of open source software has always been to create software that can be free, not in price but in terms of restrictions for use.

The availability of source code and the ability to modify that source code are important parts in the free/open source software movement, he says. Mike goes on to talk of the benefits the new offering provides to developers.

First of all, the free Flex SDK includes the source code for the Flex components, and allows the compilation of a Flex application at no cost. “You are free to modify the Flex components as you need to. As a developer, you can now build a Flash application in VIM, run it through the compiler in the SDK, which works on Linux and Mac OS X, and build a .swf file. For debugging, you can use fdb, part of the Flex SDK.”

Second, the Flex Builder tool is built on top of Eclipse, and Adobe has published the source code for Flex Builder that is derived from Eclipse. “You can create open source Flex applications, and host them over at osflash.org.  As a Flex developer, you can enable users to see your source code when they right click on your application (‘View Source’).” Your Flex application will work well with a Java backend system or PHP backend system, Mike says. For PHP integration, you will have to download and use the open source project AMFPHP.

Third, once you've built your application, you can then deploy the file as you would any other web application (likely to an Apache web server), and end users can interact with that application using the free Flash player. Mike also reveals that there is a team of engineers working on Flash Player for Linux, and you can follow their progress <a href= “http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/” target= “_blank”>on their blog</a>.  A beta version of Flash Player 9 for MacTel machines should also be out soon, with a beta for Linux later this year.

The main problem of web applications for Linux enthusiasts has been the client: web applications today cannot replace desktop applications, there are too many limitations like local file access, no vector drawing APIs native in the browser, rich media integration isn't supported, JavaScript execution speed isn't the same as compiled code, Mike says.

Flex applications aims to solve most of these problems. A drawing API is available in the Flash player, it can integrate rich media content easily, and it now has a JIT compiler for better performance. “We hope to have a better solution for local file access when we release Apollo, for which a beta version is expected later this year. The development of more advanced web applications will continue to help adoption of operating systems where the Flash Player is available, including Linux.  And yes, some developers are working on an open source Flash player,” Mike adds.