Flash Player 9 Beta for Linux Is Available

[Phil Meyer]

Gilboa Davara wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 09:44 -0700, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
>   
>> On 10/19/06, Gilboa Davara <gilboad at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> A. It's a binary blob - it's not open source.
>>> B. It's written poorly - with no multi-platform support in mind.
>>> (Most likely they mixed longs with ints and have bundles of asm code -
>>> all of this makes porting to 64bit a lovely nightmare)
>>>       
>> How do you know its written poorly?  Have you seen the source?
>>
>> BTW, Adobe has been quoted as stating that they plan to release 64bit
>> native binaries for all operating systems (Linux isn't the only one
>> lacking them) at some point in the future.
>>     
>
> You may see my view as rather narrow-minded, but in my view: Writing
> platform dependent application with no platform/arch/compiler
> abstraction == poorly written code. (unless you enjoy having MS pull the
> rug from under your feet every couple of years)
>
> Using compiler/arch dependent types (long, int) instead of using
> arch-free ones (DWORD, __u16); Having OS/GDI calls all over the place
> instead using a single well-API'ed OS layer - or using in-line assembly
> instead of having a detachable function based - ASM layer, and you'll
> end up spending two years on a Linux port and God knows how many more to
> create a Windows port.
>
> I'm not saying that the Flash team are a bunch of code monkeys - far
> from it. Taking a 'pure' Windows application and porting to Linux/MAC is
> quite a feat.
> I -am- saying that Flash (as in the application) was poorly designed
> with no multi-arch/platform/compiler support in mind and as such -
> poorly written. (Yep, I'm narrow minded)
>
> - Gilboa
>
>
>   

Which was the heart of my question, which probably should have been 
stated as:

Is the Linux code base in a state such that the developer could copy the 
source to a 64bit platform and do a make?

If not, why (obviously many technical reasons that all point to 
unwillingness by either manage or programming staff to make it so)?