Will Flash Ever Be a Standard?

Yesterday, I caught wind of some good news. It was the kind of good news that is immediately good for me and ultimately good for Linux. It was announced by MLB Advanced Media, major league baseball's online division, that video on MLB.com would no longer be delivered via Microsoft's Silverlight format but instead with Adobe Flash technology.

Given that there are a few Flash clients for Linux, including Adobe's own native player, and that there are, oh, no Silverlight players for Linux, the obvious benefit for me (and other baseball fans) is that we should be able to watch more baseball action on our Linux machines. (It wasn't too easy to feel sorry for Microsoft, either.)

Beyond the immediate benefit for Linux users, it struck me that this news reflects an even better long-term benefit for Linux--the triumph of Flash as a de facto standard for video over the Web. This may seem like a "no-duh" statement, given the proliferation of Flash on so many video sites, not the least of which YouTube. Perhaps you've heard of it. But baseball's confirmation of Flash as their preferred platform not only dispells the notion that Silverlight is making big inroads into the content delivery space (it's not) but it was a very strong business validation of Flash's standing.

Baseball, whether you like it or not, is certainly a big business, representing billions of dollars in revenue. The league doesn't make casual decisions about media technology, since getting the games out to the biggest audience possible is the ultimate goal.

There's some numbers to justify MLB's decision. In the story I read, "Adobe estimates that Flash player is installed on 98 percent of all network connected PCs in the world." If that number's even remotely close to true, that's a huge percentage of client penetration.

As excited as I am about Flash and MLB, there is still a note of caution here. A lot of folks reading this will wonder why promoting any proprietary format over another is a good idea. Sure, Flash rolls on Linux and is on every other PC, but does that give it standard status? Like I said earlier, de facto, yes. Actual, no. Ultimately, Adobe will need to open this technology up, submitting it to standards bodies and opening the format itself.

When that happens, then Flash will become a true standard, and an even more welcome component of Linux development and applications.