Monday, November 14, 2011

Besides Flash on the mobile, Adobe is also abandoning Flex.

Just a few days after improper communication of the demise of Flash on the mobile, Adobe has just shown that they wouldn't directly be responsible for the development of Flex, going forward. They've decided to abandon Flex for HTML5, a little too early.

Deepa Subramaniam, the former Product Manager on the Flex team primarily focusing on the Flex SDK and current Senior Product Manager & Engineering Manager for Adobe Monocle, recently answered some questions regarding Adobe's plans around the Flex SDK, and from her responses, it became clear that Adobe will be abandoning active development of the Flex product line not very long from now.
Is Adobe still committed to Flex?
Yes. We know Flex provides a unique set of benefits for enterprise application developers.  We also know that the technology landscape for application development is rapidly changing and our customers want more direct control over the underlying technologies they use. Given this, we are planning to contribute the Flex SDK to an open source foundation in the same way we contributed PhoneGap to the Apache Foundation when we acquired Nitobi. 
Flex SDK has always been open-source, so I wonder why you're just about contributing it again to open-source. It seems to be an indirect way of saying the community will determine it's future, going forward.
Does Adobe recommend we use Flex or HTML5 for our enterprise application development?
In the long-term, we believe HTML5 will be the best technology for enterprise application development. 
Will previously discussed Flex roadmap features be released?
The Flex roadmap will be determined by the governing board once it’s been established. We plan to contribute framework features previously highlighted as part of Adobe’s Flex roadmap, into this new project. 
So, what’s next? 
We are close to wrapping up development on Flex 4.6 SDK and it will be released on November 29th 2011. Following this, we will begin the process of moving to the open development model described above.
...
We believe these changes to the Flex SDK development model will ensure that the broader community can continue to use and directly enhance Flex for many years to come. 
 An abandoned technology is good as dead. You can read the Q&A here, as well as the interesting comments.

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