Who’s going to iPhone Dev Camp? (UPDATED)

hey... my buddy is going over... hes even begging people for moola for the iphone... (see website if interested)

Hey Scobleizer,

We’ve just received news that Adobe has waived the NDA for iPhoneDevCamp. Attendees WILL NOT HAVE TO SIGN AN NDA.

We’ve just updated the website and would appreciate it if you could help spread the word ☺

See you at iPhoneDevCamp,
whurley *

"the loop" aside. What if every company had their own html or C++ and no one standardized. How great would the internet be???

The same thing is happening with rich media formats and we are in DIRE NEED of standardization of at least a file format that everyone can build both publishing tools and players with.

On one side we have Adobe saying: like uh.. uh.... we paid $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for the Macromedia IP and they did x, y, z to infect the internet with the product, ect...

Then on the other side you have Microsoft, wanting to clone and superset TM as they do with every technology they ever see.

Had there been a standard, Apple would have built a publishing application and a player as they did with KHTML and safari, and this problem wouldn't be a problem.

Can't MS and Adobe just put aside the need for greed and just grow up for once and do what's best for everyone?

The request to respect trademarked product names would not -- logically -- stop project development. Even that one line in Wikipedia would not support your charge of Adobe trying to stop third-party SWF development tools.

(I am not privy to the content of any high-level cross-company discussions -- am not "in the loop". I work from the public record myself.)

jd/adobe

I don't blame John Dowdell for refusing to continue the conversation. Q: Who knows what negotiations Adobe and Apple are engaged in? A: Not a certain Scobleizer know-it-all. Dowdell is in the loop. With one exception, the rest of us here know we're not.

Way to avoid the question Bub. You should work at Micro$oft.

"The F4L project has halted development persuant to copyright issues regarding the "Flash" product name and other trademark oriented issues."

I did in fact read about this on mailing lists. No developer halts their own project due to self inflicted copyright and trademark violations. OK? That's just reality.

This was actually part of a greater statement of why flash, silverlight, and other vector media formats should be flushed in favor of standardization. Where are the ISO/ANSI specs for Adobe's formats?

Is Adobe ready to give up it's IP on the flash format for the good of Open Source? So everyone can use it as a generic format for creating web media? Can FOSS developers liberally use Macromedia's flash formats to create development tools for them? Can Apple and other companies?

You won't answer this question, because you're probably afraid to. That's fine, but that was the greater question, and what I was getting at, not macro-managing issues of lesser importance.

You're diverting to different issues.

Your original charge remains unsubstantiated.

jd/adobe

http://www.google.com/patents?lr=&as_drrb_a...
I do not see a patent for the macromedia flash format such as the MS asf patent:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=kY57AAAAEBAJ&a...

Are you saying definitively that the swf format has no intellectual property rights associated with it? That it's not patented, and that essentially FOSS can build a swf creator without any liability?

Is that what you are saying?

If so I would agree that a new format is not necessary. Otherwise it really is.

On the Apple note, that doc published to iPhone developers is definitive.
I do not think Adobe should use hapless developers as their army of complaint pawns against Apple by making them think that they should use flash on an unsupported platform in order to force Apple into supporting it.
If adobe does that, at least compensate them as marketers. By compensate, I mean pay them for their time.

re: "adobe sues opensource flash builders"

The Wikipedia link provided says nothing of the sort. If it did, you'd then be in a situation of "someone wrote it into wikipedia so it must be true". Charges were baseless.

(I wish the Apple docs had used proper identifiers, and a little more savvy... might be talking about "Adobe Flash Player" for laptops, or "Adobe Flash Lite" for mobile, or even a camera flash, it's vague. That article also seemed to be pushing browser-specific, device-specific pages... fine by me, but other people might object.)

jd/adobe

first of all

"Unsupported Technologies

You’ll want to avoid using Flash and Java for iPhone content. You’ll also want to avoid encouraging users to download the latest Flash on their iPhone, because neither Flash nor downloads are supported by Safari on iPhone."

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/designingcont...

Isn't this Dev camp all for not?

@24
2nd, I can cite wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F4L
I also saw a couple references on mailing lists. If this is wrong, correct it.

Chris @ beercosoftware wrote: " They [Adobe] got scared of a FOSS flash builder and they sent the developers C&D notices."

Got citation? Where's the link?

(I've never heard of such a thing myself, and I've been tracking Flash pretty closely. The theory "adobe hates opensource swf builders" would seem to conflict with my link to osflash.org, just a few comments above yours, wouldn't it...?)

jd/adobe

"I can’t think of one programming language or model that works for all cases. That’s where choice comes in."

Fine, but if it has to come to vector graphics and interactive media, let them choose a format which everyone can build a player for. Proprietary and Open Source alike.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/f4l

You know what happened to this project and GNU Gnash to some extent. You know why the last build is from 2005?
Because Flash, then owned by Macromedia got scared. They got scared of a FOSS flash builder and they sent the developers C&D notices.
There are some projects and some FOSS media formats for vector graphics. Perhaps Apple should just make a player for that. I believe that's what their doing anyway. You know Google has to be working on this as well. When push came to shove they chose Open Jabber for their Gtalk ect...
If we could just use open file formats, then let Adobe, Microsoft, ect.. make competitive players, that would be the best. If Apple stopped flash from making it to the iPhone for this reason, then they did a very good thing.

I am also one of the organizers of iPhoneDevCamp -- you don't have to "be" there to get involved, in fact, online we've been in a sort of "dig in and help others code" mode all week on the www.iPhoneWebDev.com discussion list.

We've discovered for solutions to a number of problems in creating web pages and webapps for the iPhone.

For instance, we've figured out the best way to hide the URL bar -- see http://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev/bro...

We have figured out how best to detect orientation change and change UI for landscape vs portrait -- http://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev/bro...

A lot of discussion about best practices re: viewport --
http://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev/bro...

Dealing with various problems of scaling -- http://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev/bro...

We are figuring out how to create objects that drag using two-finger drag -- http://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev/bro...

Come join us helping iPhone developers help iPhone developers!

Chris:

'“Ideally the iPhone and other companies (my employer included) should endeavor to give content creators and developers a choice”

I disagree. If they favour one format, especially a free and open one like AJAX,'

I can't think of one programming language or model that works for all cases. That's where choice comes in.

You could also use this, but again, it would be preferable just to have an open standard for interactive web media:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/f4l

Having FOSS tools for a proprietary format is no solution.

"How do you program flash for free?"
http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdeutils/khexedit...

Why with a hex editor of course :)

"Ideally the iPhone and other companies (my employer included) should endeavor to give content creators and developers a choice"

I disagree. If they favour one format, especially a free and open one like AJAX, it will cripple the others over time, and eventually we will not be encumbered with stuff like flash and silverlight.
It's the same thing the blockbuster choice of blu-ray is going to do to HD-DVD.
Microsoft long pushed their ASF wrapper for avi and mpeg upon us, and media player developers could have stopped it long before they did. I think that's one good thing that the iPhone did. I do not think the mono project moonlight is a good idea at all for the same reason.

I've hosted Barcamps in Microsoft facilities and we have not required attendees to sign NDAs. I can only imagine the uproar if we did.

Adobe is to be commended for providing a venue for hosting this event considering all the backhanded compliments the event organizers are throwing around about the 'proprietary' nature of AIR, Flash and Silverlight.

Ideally the iPhone and other companies (my employer included) should endeavor to give content creators and developers a choice about how they develop for a platform, wether that means FOSS, the ubiquity of Flash, or the tapping the skillsets of Web Developers to do more with their Web skills (Javascript) and application development skills (.NET) with Silverlight than is presently possible in the browser alone.

All these platforms and solutions (open or closed) are part of our ecosystem and it was alway my impression that barcamps and barcamp type events were about openess in communication and continuing the dialog among the community. How is that possible when everyone is signing an NDA? There seems to be some serious cognitive dissonance going on here.

Chris Bernard
User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft

Lots of different points in there, please excuse if I paraphrase....

o "Ask Adobe employees about Apple shipments": Can't do it. You'd probably get more useful results by asking Fake Steve Jobs.

o Get free Flex framework and compilers, to deliver to any of the world's computers:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/sdk/
Lots more non-Adobe free-of-cost SWF creation tools:
http://www.osflash.org/
http://www.swftools.com/

o MXML source is available to context-click at creator discretion. (ie, it's not mandated that you give away your source code; it's your own choice.)

o Unsubstantiated quotes of "I heard some Adobe employee say" are not reliable sources of information.
(But any partner typically makes their own announcements... Adobe just licenses technology to partners, and individual Adobe staffers cannot make product announcements for other companies. Whatever someone actually said may just have referenced Apple as a special case of the general situation.)

o For "Why is Adobe hosting the BarCamp event?" see FAQ (we do a lot with HTML):
http://www.barcamp.org/iPhoneDevCampAdobeFAQ

o For "Why NDA?" see FAQ (if you see someone's cube whiteboard, don't spread it, 'kay?):
http://www.barcamp.org/iPhoneDevCampAdobeFAQ

o Apollo is a way to use existing Ajax/Flash pages outside of a universal document browser, as standalone desktop applications, with file-writing privileges, drag'n'drop and clipboard operation with other apps, data-sharing with other local applications. It is neither browser plugin nor "stack"; it is a way to make desktop applications from regular webpages.

jd/adobe

Hey Robert, thanks for mentioned iPhoneDevCamp. As a co-organizer of the event, I'd like to clarify a few very valid questions that have been raised so far.

@monk.e.boy: The version of WebKit on the iPhone is an earlier version the current builds which do support SVG. For now you can make use of a relatively new feature called "canvas" which gives you a great deal of control over the behavior and appearance of the page. Combining SVG + Canvas + JS gives you an approximation of Flash... far from the real thing, but at least it's open source and non-proprietary. If Flash became an open standard tomorrow, I'd be much more positive about promoting Flash on the iPhone; until then I'm all about promoting the open web technologies that work on the iPhone *today*.

@Ethan, @Nik: You guys raise really important points, and one that was almost a deal-breaker for me as well, as I helped secure the venue. We were originally talking to Yahoo (and Google and Apple, but they didn't return our emails) about hosting the event but they couldn't make it happen in time. Adobe was able to offer up the venue with the condition that everyone sign the standard NDA. If you read it, it's actually not that offensive, but I can understand how it would be a dealbreaker for some (note also that if you have a prior NDA with Adobe, the terms of that agreement supersede this one). Lastly, in the spirit of *camps, you're perfectly free to fork the event if you feel that we're not doing a good job or if you can find a venue that doesn't require an NDA. We were fortunate to have Adobe provide the venue on such short notice; their only requirement is, as Robert has pointed out, standard procedure when visiting Adobe anyway.

I'm personally pretty excited about this event, not because of the iPhone, but because it represents an advance in support for open web technologies. While Apollo and Silverlight are creating proprietary stacks, the iPhone has decided to embrace open standards-based technology. I can't speak to their motivations, but I think this represents a huge opportunity. That the phone hardware itself is closed and you don't get app-level privileges is to be lamented for sure, but I believe that those who embrace the constraints that the iPhone provides as a chance to really push the limits of what's possible (heck, it's developing for ONE browser on the device! When have web developers only had to worry about ONE browser at a time?!).

Anyway, hope to see y'all there. It should be a good time. Oh, and for those interested, here's the Upcoming link:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/208122

Sony Erricson W810i
Huawei E220 3G card for the HP laptop
No Nokia branded clothing items

Yep that does indeed make me a shill for them :).

Robert: I am aware of those, but this agreement seems to be a bit more aggressive and broader than most. Specifically since Adobe can tell you *after* you find something out that it is confidential (eg. in that scenario you had where you stumble into a room and find something out - you don't know it is confidential until afterwards). This means that it can also apply to the situation I described in my last comment

The question really is, would Adobe sue a blogger who has signed this NDA (eg. they have entered the Adobe building at some point) and has revealed information that Adobe consider sensitive. the answer is probably that they wouldn't (especially you Robert ;)) and which is why I might have been a bit quick to jump to my guns in the last comment

I guess they would sue if it was a super-big-deal though, something that hurts the company financially or reputation-wise in a big way.

Regardless, I would like to think that they could waive the NDA admission requirement for iPhoneDevCamp since this is a non-Adobe event, is on a weekend and they could just partition out an area open to all

Does the iPhone's graphic stack support images built with Quartz Composer? One might not need the flash that Falsh brings to the table.

Ten things you should know before buying a iPhone: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/buyer.s-guide/wait-t...

Garth: it seems the gig with Nokia is not working out for you?

Nik: I've signed the Adobe NDA at least seven times.

Here's why: it's a requirement just to get a badge to enter its building. When you sign in to get your badge you sign an NDA.

This is the same at Google, Microsoft, Seagate, Cisco, and most big companies.

If you want access to big company property you must sign the NDA.

That said it's mostly to protect them in case you take a wrong turn down an aisle and see a whiteboard with stuff you weren't supposed to see and then you blog about that.

I'm not worried about the NDA. Not one bit.

I never thought I would see the day where the host of a Barcamp (well, Barcamp-related event) would require all those attending to sign an NDA.

I was about to sign up since we have done a lot of iPhone dev in the past week, and also to cover for Techcrunch. There is a good reason why the NDA is a deal-breaker for me, and that is because it is too vague and encompasses any information that Adobe does or could consider sensitive.

There are probably things that I know about Adobe right now that nobody outside of the company is supposed to know - if I sign this NDA, then in a few months time just happen to mention any one of those things in a blog post, they would be able to pin me, even if I knew the information before this event and I didn't pick the information up at the event.

I don't see how you could sign it either Robert, as I am sure that somewhere in your head there are a few tips on Adobe you have received that aren't supposed to be public information.

Surprisingly I have yet to see a single blogger fuss about the NDA requirement

Hi Robert,

For some reason, your site cannot be accessed using the http://www.scobleizer.com/ url.

You get the following error,
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.scobleizer.com/" on this server.
Reference #18.a48f748.1183475404.b7b6b6d

But it works fine with http://scobleizer.com

Thanks.

http://barcamp.org/iPhoneDevCampAdobeFAQ

The iPhone doesn't have flash support right?
So why the hell is adobe sponsoring an iPhone Dev conference based on flash?

Something tells me they are a bit tarded.
They're not taking no for an answer. The bad part is that they are trying to stick their foot into Steve Jobs's door, and Apple is known to be complete dicks.

When attending you have to sign an NDA....interesting.

"Everyone in attendance will be asked to sign a brief Non-Disclosure Agreement, either electronically or on paper. This agreement is in place to protect attendees in case they are exposed to any confidential information from Adobe. We do not anticipate that attendees will be exposed to Adobe Confidential information"

http://barcamp.org/iPhoneDevCampAdobeNDA

Scoble the iPhone shill ... the Seagate gig not working out ???.

It only feeds the rumor mill at this point, but an Adobe employee tells me that Apple's license for Flash/AIR is such that they don't have to tell them anything about what they're doing with their software, and, accordingly, they could be releasing AIR on the iPhone tomorrow and wouldn't have to tell Adobe.

That said, if that were happening, it's my instinct that someone at Adobe would already know, and until something's announced, it's just mildly amusing speculation.

How do you program flash for free?

You could afford to spend money of software because you are rich ;-)

I think you need a team to make a decent game. Art, sound, 3D, game engine, story, characters etc.

Hey. I don't even have a mobile phone. I can't afford to run one. I am 32 and still don't have a house because I can't afford one of those either ;-)

So paying £10 for a game seems like a lot of money.

monk.e.boy

monk.e.boy: the first thing I'd program if I were smart would be games designed specifically for the iPhone. I'd put them up on a site like www.kongregate.com and if it were good would see a ton of users and maybe a bit of money.

I bet there's no developer toolset of note on the iPhone so Steve Jobs can charge people.

If my son wanted me to buy him some Adobe tools I'd buy them, by the way.

By the way, you don't need to pay Adobe to program Flash. You need to pay Adobe if you want to use Adobe's Flash tools, though.

Ugh Flash.

And you want your son to be a programmer. You realise with JS and HTML he can code for the iPhone for FREE (as in cost and freedom) But now you want Flash as well, so now you have to pay Adobe to program software.

Ugh.

And now you can't 'right click -> view source' so how is he going to learn? Buy a book from Adobe.

Why not ask Apple to get SVG in the browser? It'd make far more sense, more people would be able to pay for the programming environment (vi, emacs) tons of people could tinker with your code making cool new toys with it. Poor people could get involved (say I was 14 and asked my dear old Mum for £300 to buy Adobe suit of tools. She would laugh her socks off. But I can download vi for free (yay!))

But yes, until SVG + JS get going, we are stuck with Falsh.

Do the JS animation frameworks work on the iPhone? Stuff like mootools and jstween?

Maybe this will help keep filthy flash off the iPhone.

monk.e.boy