14 DAY TRIAL // Considered one of the Free Software Foundation's highest priority projects, GNU Gnash is now in active development. While not being the best at finding names for their projects, the FSF felt they had to produce a free alternative player for the web's most successful proprietary web content format - Macromedia's Flash (some would argue it's pdf, but I disagree - ask your mom of which she knows more).
Although the reason for the alternative is mostly political, some of it is definitely practical. It appears that Macromedia has only included Windows and Mac OS X as platforms for its FlashPlayer 8. Emmy Huang, Product Manager of the Flash Player explains that the Linux version is just delayed. "Based on the short time frame between announcing Flash Player 8 and Flash Player 8.5, we decided to work on developing a Linux version for Flash Player 8.5, which will ship after the Windows and Mac versions."
Rob Savoye, the maintainer of gnash, noted that there is a sizable demand for a GPL-licensed Flash player. While the proprietary player has been ported to x86, ARM, Xscale, PPC, MIPS, and SH4 processors, and to Windows, Linux, Solaris, QNX, and BeOS, it's not available for others, such as FreeBSD. Adobe may well decide that not enough people use Flash on Solaris to justify the costs, and discontinue the port. Gnash is a solution to that too, but the stated purpose of its existence remains offering freedom.