Adobe plans to retire Flash Player by the end of 2020

Jul 31, 2017 07:20 GMT  ·  By

Adobe recently announced that it would be killing off Flash Player by the end of 2020, and tech giants like Microsoft, Apple, and Google revealed plans to migrate to alternative solutions and ensure a smooth transition for all users.

But not everyone seems to be ready to let Flash Player go, especially given the impact it could have on the browsing experience, as millions of websites out there are believed to be using Flash content that would become obsolete once Adobe pulls the plug on its software.

A petition published on GitHub by developer Juha Lindstedt calls for Adobe to open-source Flash Player, explaining that otherwise “future generations can’t access the past and games, experiments, and websites would be forgotten.”

3,500 votes and counting

The petition goes on to explain that open-sourcing Flash could keep a number of projects alive, especially in those cases where transitioning to alternative solutions is not possible.

“We're not saying Flash player should be preserved as is,” the developer, who calls for users to star the petition to show their support for an open source version of Flash Player, explains.

“Open sourcing Flash spec would be a good solution to keep Flash projects alive safely for archive reasons. Don't know how, but that's the beauty of open source: you never know what will come up after you go open source! There might be a way to convert swf/fla to HTML5/canvas/webgl/webassembly, or some might write a standalone player for it. Another possibility would be to have a separate browser.”

At this point, there are more than 3,500 stars for the petition, though the number is expected to increase substantially as more people find about it online.

Adobe hasn’t offered a statement to say whether it indeed considered open-sourcing Flash Player or not, but this is unlikely the case, though it remains to be seen what happens in the next 3 years since we’re so far from the moment when the end of its software is officially reached.