Krishwords

and the winner is Linux. Check it out here. My question is: Why do you need a contest to know this?

Adobe today released AIR framework for Linux. It is still in Alpha version and you can download it here. You can find the release notes here. Also, read the writeup by Josh Catone and Ryan Stewart.

Adobe AIR is not an open source software. However, it excites me because it is the only framework (right now) that offers the same kinda experience on all three operating systems, Linux, Mac and Windows. The apps developed on AIR framework works flawlessly on these operating systems. This is a very important for the following reasons.

• Both data and apps are moving to the cloud, thereby, making desktops redundant. With this shift, we are more worried about the open standards used in the storage of our data in the cloud and data portability than the open source nature of the underlying software. In a way, open source, as we know it from the previous era, is losing steam to other ideas like open standards, data portability, open publishing, etc.. However, open source doesn’t become irrelevant in the SaaS world, as people like Tim O’ Reilly would like you to believe. Open source is the precursor for the Web 2.0 movements like Data Portability and others. Also, the idea of open source code is very important even in the case of web apps as we have seen with wordpress and wikis. Having said that, we have to accept the fact that the desktop, as we knew it from the past, is slowly getting redundant. The future desktops may not need high computing capacity. We could have a reasonably powerful desktop/laptop and derive the necessary computing power from the cloud. This has resulted in a wave of “cloud PCs and Laptops” running Linux. Adobe AIR on Linux is very important for these Linux based cloud PCs to gain traction. The user experience offered by AIR apps will help propel Linux based cloud machines into the mainstream, eventually resulting in more Linux adoption.
• With the buggy releases of Vista and Leopard and the prominence gained by Ubuntu, there is an opening for Linux in the desktop market, even though the market is dead in the Cloud Computing era. People are not inclined to spend money on desktop operating systems when the computing power lies in the web. Ubuntu is slowly gaining traction among the ordinary desktop users. If this trend has to consolidate, it is important that users are offered an experience similar to what they get in Windows and Mac. Right now, Adobe’s AIR is the only platform that could offer such an experience.

In my opinion, Adobe has released AIR for Linux at an opportune time both for Linux evangelists/companies and for Adobe itself. Linux evangelists and companies can project the user experience on Adobe AIR to gain traction for Linux desktops among ordinary users. Adobe can benefit by gaining a monopoly kinda advantage because they have now embraced a big segment of desktop users who had to live at the mercy of ‘volunteer’ developers in the past. Do you agree with this take or do you think that I have compromised my idea of ‘open world’ by embracing a proprietary software like Adobe AIR?