Yes, but if this is an admit of defeat by Adobe's engineering (like how to some extent you can say it was on Tablet/phone platform), it just is a bad sign for them.
What as a consumer of flash platform I need form Adobe is clarity and commitment. Today I see it has gone another step backward. Just reinforces the public opinion of wanting to move away from Flash even more.
Big picture they are trying to kill flash! I just don't think that this particular story is that big of a deal because it really only affects linux firefox users. So it's sort of a neat way to for them to re-prioritize on maintaining a product that they anticipate deprecating in the long run.
The section on Flash player for desktop does say they are keen on making it better, especially with on the multimedia front (I have to admit there are some pain points they do solve for multimedia).
Nevertheless, I am with you in predicting that this is a sure sign of their slow but sure move towards killing it. I just hope people read it faster than we can and not pour money on building flash based solutions. (A lot of enterprise still use flash).
How does it only affect linux firefox users? I think you're right about Adobe's motives, but it certainly affects any linux browser that could use libflashplayer, no? Ie Chrom*, Opera..
They're dropping the NPAPI (Netscape Plugin API) version on Linux.
Chrome currently ships with both an NPAPI version of Flash, and a PPAPI (Pepper - basically a replacement plugin API developed by Google, as an offshoot of NaCl) version. The PPAPI version will still be updated, so when the next version of Flash comes out, Chrome will just use the PPAPI version.
But the PPAPI version will only be shipped with Chrome, and only Chrome / Chromium support PPAPI plugins. Any Linux users using any browser other than Chrome will basically be out of luck.
What as a consumer of flash platform I need form Adobe is clarity and commitment. Today I see it has gone another step backward. Just reinforces the public opinion of wanting to move away from Flash even more.