As of today, Adobe has removed all license restrictions on the use of the Flash SWF and FLV/F4V formats, as well as the AMF protocol. This is exciting news, since it means that more folks can get into the business of building Flash playback devices and systems that can talk directly to Flash. This may be a particular boon for F/OSS projects like gnash.

Of course, there are some real questions about how this will play out. Adobe is still in control of the formats in question; they haven’t announced plans to open the specification process to the public (at least not that I’ve seen). While Adobe pledged to keep the open standards up-to-date, failing to include a process for including community contribution increases the chance of forking the standard. And that dilution of Flash was the supposed reason for the very license restrictions that were lifted today.

In any case, I see this as a step in the right direction. Any Internettechnology wide-spread enough to be considered an de facto standard should be based on open standards. I applaud the efforts of Adobe in at least attempting to strike a balance.