Flash Platform Messaging Protocol Free for All

With Microsoft's Silverlight breathing down it's neck, Adobe promised that, by mid-2009, it would open its Flash platform messaging protocol, in a move to solidify the dominance of the Flash technology. In this regard, the company announced that, by the summer of this year, developers would be able to access detailed documentation of the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) specification, published on Adobe Developer Connection. The open streaming specification is the latest initiative from Adobe, under the umbrella of the Open Screen Project.

“With the RTMP specification, developers and companies will be able to provide users with optimized audio, video and data streaming, no matter what kind of device the user is on or where the content is coming from,” Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch revealed. “Our ongoing commitment to openness is accelerating adoption of the Flash Platform by developers and resulting in a new generation of Web applications, content and video experiences that run reliably across operating systems and devices.”

Opening the Flash platform messaging protocol is for Adobe a move similar to what the company has already done for SWF (the Flash file format) and for PDF (Portable Document Format). The protocol has been designed to enable high-performance audio, video, and data transmissions, but only exclusively between Adobe Flash Platform technologies. Via the public RTMP, companies will be able to take advantage of the specification when it will come down to offering rich experiences across a variety of channels, with the Flash runtime environment at the foundation.

“RTMP provides an enhanced and efficient way to deliver rich content. Developers and companies will have free and open access to the documented RTMP specification, to help enable unparalleled delivery of video, audio and data in the open AMF, SWF, FLV and F4V formats compatible with Adobe Flash Player,” Adobe added, specifying that the sole aspect of the streaming specification that would not be published involved the company's unique RTMP security measures. Adobe's position is that such information would enable all parties to circumvent the security measures, making them useless.