The nonprofit LinuxFund.org is providing financial support for Gnash, the Flash alternative, to accelerate development of the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP).
The free Gnash player is to defy Adobe's Flash by playing Flash content from a variety of different servers. Gnash can indeed recognize different Flash content, albeit not with all Flash functionality, as has been the case up to now. The LinuxFund.org, therefore, wants to bring the software up to date by sponsoring RTMP development for Gnash.
Gnash should then be able to accept and play video streams from open source Flash servers Red5, Cygnal and Dimdim, thereby greatly increasing the number of accessible websites. Developer Sandro Santilli is to take over implementation, with development costs supported by LinuxFund.org to run at $8,500.
Gnash's lead developer Rob Savoye writes in a press release that the work will link various open media clients and servers and that the financial infusion couldn't have come at a better time. Savoye is founder and CTO of the Open Media Now! Foundation that is part of the GNU Project. Savoye summarizes the goals of the foundation: "We are promoting an infrastructure that enables the creation, the streaming, and the viewing of digital content, using free software in a legally conforming way." Among the tools that profit from LinuxFund.org support is the free LiVES video editor.
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