I think the fundamental problem here is that we, as true hackers, place too much emphases on the importance of openness. I'd argue that, for the average developer, strong design tools and the promise of cross-browser consistency is well worth sacrificing openness.
I see what you're saying, but I wasn't coming at it from a Stallmanesque openness-for-openness's-sake angle. Openness is also important as a guarantee, particularly in this case. For example, and this might sound like something RMS would say, we should be able to display Web content on some new device, without depending on Adobe to develop and maintain support for a version of Flash Player for that device.
Why should the "open web" depend on Adobe or any one company to do something you need?
I totally appreciate the value of "open", but pragmatically, it simply doesn't matter.
Every modern PC or Mac has Flash. Developers and, more importantly, "webmasters" (implying lack of technical skill) can rely on it being there.
OK, so the iPhone doesn't have Flash. How many web pages are broken really? Much fewer than you'd think. But even when broken pages affect the average user, they don't think "Damn you Adobe!" nor do they say "The people who run this site are stupid!" and they certainly don't blame Apple who makes this device they love so much. Believe it or not, the average user immediately assumes they personally did something wrong or are completely unsensitive to the problem. "Hmmm, I guess this page doesn't work on my phone... I'll show you later."
Openness solves engineering problems. Users don't understand engineering problems. More over, openness solves FUTURE engineering problems. Most people aren't sensitive to problems affecting them tomorrow, much less problems affecting the greater web community 5 years from now.
Wow. Apparently this comment was so bad that my other comment got down voted for it...
All I was trying to say that is that the average person is not sensitive to the same problems as "us". Flash isn't going to die because too many people just don't care about what we see as wrong with it.
On a side note: Personally, I'd rather see Flash go open than die. I value competition.
OK, but wouldn't it be better if the pages just worked for the user? That seems more important than being able to escape the blame. As you said, openness solves future engineering problems. I think that matters pragmatically.
It would be even better if when viewing a page that is only a flash object Safari on the iphone would have some sort of message saying that Flash is not supported on the iPhone. Of course that is advertising for flash...
