December | 2011 | Thetus Blog

The Adobe Flex Open Source Hubbub

December 22, 2011 by Thetus Leave a comment

What is Adobe Flex and why do we care? Flex is a tool we use to develop rich browser-based applications (i.e. “Enterprise Applications”) that run in the Adobe Flash Player. Like many businesses, Flex and the Flash Player have been an integral part of our software ecosystem, and a necessity to build our software. Our flagship product, Savanna, is a multi-source analysis application that is built in Flex.

The Flex SDK is already available to the open source community, but under the control of Adobe, meaning that they solely have the power to actually make any changes to Flex. Now Adobe has officially decided to relinquish this control and send Flex off into the great wide, open source world. You can see the latest news at the Adobe team’s blog.

In order to cement ongoing commitment to Flex in the community, Adobe has a proposal in place with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to guide the future of Flex. Apache has a proven methodology for managing open source projects, where a group of contributors in the community votes on what changes are committed to the Software Development Kit. Now that members of the Flex community will be directly involved in the future development of Flex, we can expect improvements that truly reflect the needs of the developer community.

Ryan, one of our developers said “I believe that we will benefit from Adobe donating to Apache, it will allow the community not only to make suggestions but take part in the updates.”

As the debate on HTML5 versus Flex continues, we can assume there will be plenty of tools for HTML5 development for web applications and new client side application development solutions will be on the horizon. For Thetus, and our installed base, Flex and the Flash Player remain the best client application solution. We’re excited about what is coming to the browser in the next year and what we can do for our customers with these new options.

What would you most like to see in the Apache managed Flex SDK?

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Hacking For Humanity on December 3rd & 4th

December 2, 2011 by Thetus 1 Comment

If you’re a software developer who enjoys giving back to the community, then here’s the perfect opportunity to put your technology skills to good use.

Join the community of do-gooder technologists just like you called Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK). They describe themselves as “a global community of innovators building practical open technology to make the world a better place.”

This community volunteers their time to help create solutions for a variety of problems from gender equality to disaster resiliency. Solutions developed by the RHoK community have been used by organizations such as the World Bank, governments, emergency responders, and citizens.

Random Hacks of Kindness hosts global hackathon events around the world to bring together a community of developers to build programs and applications, their description of a hackathon is: A simultaneous global hackathon which addresses issues of disaster and humanitarian response. Local subject matter experts are brought in to guide the developers in relevant issues and to further the use of developed tools after the event.

If you reside in Portland, OR (as we do) then consider yourself booked this weekend (December 2-4), because you’ll be hacking for humanity at the Portland hosted RHoK Hackathon. This evening join your fellow hackers for a reception to discuss ideas at Urban Airship’s offices. Then Saturday and Sunday let the hacking and problem solving begin!