OSFUN 2 october 2005

A virtual get-together and an open-source Flash Communication Server initiative top up this update from the world of Open Source Flash.

by Aral Balkan It's been a few weeks now since my last update and the Open Source Flash world has definitely not been standing still, in fact...

100,000 OSFlashers and counting...
The Open Source Flash movement continues to gain recognition and the OSFlash wiki celebrated its 100,000th unique visitor in September. The trend is set to grow with exciting new projects being added to the initiative on an almost-weekly basis. The latest such project to be turning heads in the Flash community is called Red5.

Open Source Flash Communication Server Alternative
When John Grden first proposed the idea of creating an open-source Flash Communication Server alternative on OSFlash, I must say that even I was somewhat skeptical. It was a huge undertaking and I had seen too many grandiose open source projects lose steam after a while. Well, not this one. John's done an amazing task of rallying developers to his side and, this week, their open-source Flash Communication Server alternative, Red5, got its first green light!

It's still very early days but the enthusiasm for the project is in fever pitch -- the mailing list has already shot to the top spot in terms of traffic.

The Red5 web site on OSFlash has lots more information, including documentation of the RTMP protocol and a tutorial for building Red5 from Subversion using Eclipse.

It looks like Red5 has all the momentum it needs to come into fruition and add to the growing list of OSFlash success stories. Speaking of which...

An Open Source Success Story
MTASC helped transform Pet Tomato's workflow on their Transformers Promo Games for the Cartoon Network. This project is a great example of open source software complimenting Macromedia's Flash toolset: "All the media was still made and incorporated using MMC [The Macromedia Complier or, in this case, the Flash IDE]. We would simply compose a SWF of assets and use MTASC to inject the code."

And what did Pet Tomato think of the process? "Basically, our opinion is highly favorable. Now that I have been using MTASC, I don't think I could go back to MMC."

OFLA Online
Nicolas Cannasse is spearheading an initiative to get an online conference together for OSFlash. OFLA Online is currently scheduled to be held on Friday, 21st October, starting at 18:00 GMT, via Macromedia Breeze. Thanks go out to Mike Chambers and Macromedia for providing OSFlash with a Breeze room for the event.

There is currently a call for speakers and we already have a nice attendee list on the site.

I also have plans for organizing a real-world OSFlash conference in Europe in 2006. For more information on that and for continued updates from the Open Source Flash world, look out for my next OSFun column here on Flash Magazine.

Why so shy? Come join the fun!
If all this has gotten you excited, why not come down and join us? Sign up for the OSFlash mailing list or just spend hours soaking up the content on the OSFlash Wiki. If you're feeling particularly adventurous, you could even apply to join one of the many open source projects hosted on OSFlash and give something back to the community.

 

 

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