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Adobe has [announced][1] it will release the [Flex software development kit][2] (SDK) as an open source project governed by the Mozilla public license. The move continues an Adobe trend of moving toward an open development platform that started with last year's [donation of the Tamarin rendering engine][3] to the Mozilla foundation.
Flex is Adobe's Flash development framework which allows developers to build user interfaces using an XML-based language rather than the Flash IDE. Flex is a framework bundle that comes with various components designed to make it easy to build internet apps using web services, remote objects, drag and drop, built in animation effects, and other interface elements.
The open source portions of today's Flex announcement include a compiler, debugger, an automated testing framework and number of component libraries designed to speed up development.
Adobe will continue to sell Flex Builder, the Eclipse-based development tool as well as the Flex server tools.
The open sourcing of Flex won't happen all at once. Adobe plans to start with the upcoming release of Flex 3 by providing daily builds shortly after the initial release. The fully open source licensing of the SDK won't happen until December at which time the project will be open to community contributions.
For developers that don't want to use the open source licensing scheme Adobe will also continue to license Flex under its existing commercial license.
Open source is almost never a bad thing from a developers point of view and Adobe seems to be seriously committed to the idea. With Microsoft recently releasing a Flash competitor, Adobe's announcement is clearly intended to appeal to those who reject proprietary systems.
The only real loser in today's announcement may be [OpenLazlo][4] which began life as an open source alternative to Adobe's (then) closed Flex framework. However, OpenLazlo has since broadened its approach somewhat, moving beyond Flash, and will hopefully continue to enjoy community support.
[1]: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_Source "Adobe to Open Source Flex"
[2]: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/sdk/ "Flex 2 SDK"
[3]: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/11/adobe_releases_.html "Adobe Releases Tamarin"
[4]: http://www.openlaszlo.org/ "Open Lazlo 4"
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