Gnash Project

Gnash 0.8.5 Released!

The fourth beta release of Gnash has just been made at version
0.8.5. Gnash is a GPLv3'd SWF movie player and browser plugin for
Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror. Gnash supports many SWF v7 features
and ActionScript 2 classes. with growing support for SWF v8 and
v9. Gnash also runs on many GNU/Linux distributions, embedded
GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, non x86 processors, and 64 bit
architectures. There are also standalone players for GNOME or KDE
based desktops.

Improvements since the 0.8.4 release are:

* Cygnal media server alpha release!
* New MIT-SHM and XVideo support for better performance.

It's about time... After bitching about the lack of RTMP specifications last year when Adobe released their ActionScript specs, they just announced they'll be releasing RTMP specs sometime this year. This announcement is pretty meaningless to the Gnash team, as we already wrote our own docs (Gnash RTMP docs) over a year ago, and have both client side and server side RTMP support in the Gnash source tree, but it's still a nice gesture on Adobe's part.

Adobe's Press release

For those people that want to see what is actually stored in these files, Gnash includes a utility program called "soldumper", which will do this for you to make sure your privacy isn't being invaded. -- rob

Original link

Flash Cookies: The Silent Privacy Killer
October 9th, 2008

There are hundreds of applications out there from spyware cleaners to built-in browser features that eliminate cookies on the spot, and even let you set cookie policies on your computer regarding what can be stored in your machine, and for how long.

The first beta release of Gnash has just been made at version 0.8.2. Gnash is a GPL'd SWF movie player and browser plugin for Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror. Gnash supports many SWF v7 features and ActionScript 2 classes. with growing support for SWF v8 and v9. Gnash also runs on many GNU/Linux distributions, embedded GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, non x86 processors, and 64 bit architectures. Ports to Darwin and Windows are in progress for a future release. The plugin works best with Firefox 1.0.4 or newer, and should work in any Mozilla based browser. There is also a standalone player for GNOME or KDE based desktops.

February 20th, 2008

Posted by Seth Schoen, EFF

The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video (FLV) into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers.

Gnash is now included in the latest release of Yellow Dog Linux.

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Original Link

OVELAND, Colorado - 5 February 2008 - Terra Soft today released Yellow Dog Linux v6.0 for Sony PS3, Apple G4/G5, and IBM System p. Built upon the CentOS foundation, a popular derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), YDL v6.0 offers enterprise quality for the home user.

Original Link

Spotlight on Gnash
Wed, 2007-08-01 00:50 — dcp

Blue GNU interviews Rob Savoye, of the Gnash project, to provide readers an understanding of the project - how it began and where it is heading.

When and why was Gnash started?

Gnash initially was started as an embedded Flash player for a digital stereo system about 3 years ago. Then John Gilmore asked me if I'd be interested in turning it into a desktop plugin for Firefox, which I did. That attracted attention to the Gnash project, which has been under heavy development since. My main reason for starting Gnash was it seemed a great solution for embedded user interfaces for CE devices. That and it was getting impossible to navigate the web without a flash plugin, as I have always refused to install the proprietary one.

Original article with images

By Mitch Meyran

Gnash is the Free Software Foundation’s alternative Adobe Flash player. Version 0.8 is the third alpha release, and frankly, it rocks! It is also one of the first projects to be covered by the GPLv3.

About Gnash
Some history

Originally based on GameSWF, it is a reimplementation of Macromedia/Adobe Flash version 7, with some stuff from Flash 8/9 added. It is, right now, the most advanced free software implementation of Flash. And, as a matter of fact, it actually works well in many cases.

The third alpha release of Gnash has just been made at version
0.8.0. Gnash is a GPL'd Flash movie player and browser plugin for
Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror, and Opera. Gnash supports many SWF v7
features and ActionScript2 classes. Gnash also runs on many GNU/Linux
distributions, embedded GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, non x86
processors, and 64 bit architectures. Ports to Darwin and Windows are
in progress for a future release. The plugin works best with Firefox
1.0.4 or newer, and should work in any Mozilla based browser. There is
also a standalone player for GNOME or KDE based desktops.

Two approaches to Flash
The free software community has two independent projects working toward the implementation of a free Flash player: Gnash and swfdec. There has been some talk recently about these two projects, their goals, their accomplishments, and whether it makes sense to have them both. In an effort to bring more light to the situation, LWN held a conversation with the principal developers of both projects.