The Gnashing of teeth

"With the rise of the HTML 5 video and formats like Google's WebM, Flash may be on the way out. But for now, it remains the dominant format for viewing videos on the web. Consequently, from a desktop user's perspective, few free software projects are as important as a free-license Flash player. And that, in turn, is why the announcement that GNASH .8.8 was released last week, and is supposed to be compatible with all Youtube videos is important news -- and disappointing when it proves not to be completely true.

"Not, you understand, that I would be unduly disappointed if I could never read the latest stupid video posted on Facebook. In fact, in some moods, I believe that the productivity of the entire wired world would increase several hundred percent if videos had never come to the web.

"But videos are commonplace on the Internet, and many people want them. And, personally, I am tired of having to choose between the guilts of pretending to friends that I have seen their latest link or of using the non-free Adobe Flashplayer so that I have at least a chance of understanding what my friends who use other operating systems are talking about."

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