AIR is now from HARMAN, what to expect?

[clouds40936465]

It is good or bad?

[hferreira80]

We found this in history of man kind and even now a days (not just software).

For instance: Extreme thinking about futebol leads to very strong and ugly fights (I know this very well on my country).

But a fair play, leads to a beautiful game and a good time. We can't win always and without an opponent can't even play the game.

PS: Sorry if it seems that we are moving away from the topic but it is important and it is related to the current state of AIR and the question posted.

[Leo Kanel]

If people accepted realistically what is happening everything would be better. Hopefully, Harman will open their forum soon and maybe all the toxicity from here, won't migrate there.

In other news, Andrew said that we will soon beta (maybe next week), so let's hope neither Harman, or devs will find any serious bugs.

[ASWC]

First, you put words in my mouth that I never ever said so you are despicable and dishonest.

Second, everything I said on these forums for years have come true whether people believe it or not. So people like you can call me what you want except: WRONG, cos I have been right this whole time.

- I said Adobe will give up on Flash soon so be ready, people here didn't believe it, called me name, guess what? I was right.

- I said Adobe will give up on AIR soon so be ready, people here didn't believe it, called me names, guess what? AGAIN, I was right.

What I never said and makes you a liar of the worse kind, is that there's something wrong with AIR. AIR is a good tech, I always said it like I always said what's really wrong is that Adobe is in charge of it.

So yeah keep on dreaming and calling me names but I've been 100% right every single time, all you can hope for is that I'm going be (finally!) wrong this one (and last) time ....

[hferreira80]

I think that you don't carefully read my post and extreme thinking's lead to war and unfortunately, you just prove that.

Yes, they took Flash and Flex but it's not their core business and yes also did not know how to manage the community and monetize the tech that they had in hands however it's just tech. It's always the same but just tech.

There are plenty reasons to port to another technology and there are good reasons not to do it even on a corporate use case. You should not force anyone to think like you do so you should keep to your self.

[hferreira80]

Yes, this is extreme behavior.

Do only thing in tech world extreme that I like is, XP (Xtreme Programming ), so I will let you "stay with the bike"

[davidrenelt]

Problem with ASWC is that he's obsessed with being right. But there are some in the "remain" camp (to pull an analogy europeans only will get) with the same motivation. I wouldn't call it toxic tho .. noone gets hurt, and actually while being motivated by all the wrong things, those guys put out often times good arguments.

The thing is ... as much as it pains me, ASWC was and is right. Air was in the process of dying for a while now, and now it's somewhat official. As far as i know there is no business plan on harmans side. I suspect they "aquired" the tech because they use it themselves and for now it's cheaper to maintain the whole thing for a while rather then having to port all their apps to a different platform. It buys them time.

You ask, why people come here and proclaim the death of Air? Because as a freelance developer, I have to support my family with my work. If a tech is going to be around for 2 years from now, or not matters. And I believe it is a reasonable thing to do, to not bet on Air any longer. In fact I would see it as a moral duty to warn people who are on the fence. Everyone will make up their own minds, but dear "remainers" ... you have to admit that this recent development is hardly a sign of Air being vibrant and alive.

[kheftel]

I'm not 100% convinced that transferring AIR to HARMAN is adobe "abandoning" it. Shutting it down completely would be abandoning it. HARMAN could of course ride it into oblivion, but we don't know that yet.

on the other hand, how is Apache Flex doing since Apache took over? (I don't use flex, so I'm not very knowledgeable about that community)

[ASWC]

Apache Flex latest release was 2 years ago. Again I was "lucky" to foresee a lack of future since Flex was not mobile compliant and despite Apache amazing work in turning around the framework and pulling together a "mobile friendly" skin, all this was way too late. Again Adobe passed the hot potato way too late long after most have already left. There was no saving it.

You are not convinced Adobe is abandoning AIR despite Adobe officially publishing article saying it's abandoning AIR in June 2019? The terms were "we are dropping support as of June 2019" and "we will provide BASIC security update until 2020". If this is not "abandoning" then I sure don't know what that word means.

Adobe handling of the situation was: no AIR33 release, months of silence, and out of the blue announcing immediate dropping of AIR support and passing over to HARMAN the "hot potato". If none of this worries you then clearly nothing will.

[kheftel]

Again, and I'll drop it after this, because I have no desire to argue further....

My opinion is they're handing it off, not abandoning it - if they were abandoning it, they'd shut it down and not hand it off to anyone. of course they're not going to provide support for something that is now someone else's job to provide support for. If you sold something to your friend, and then I accused you of "abandoning" it because you no longer support it.... that wouldn't make any sense.

Of course HARMAN might just turn around and shut it down / abandon it, and that's obviously your opinion, which you're entitled to, and I never said I wasn't worried.... but I'm just providing a counter opinion to your constant refrain of "I'M RIGHT AND I TOLD YOU SO".

[davidrenelt]

What would you call it when a company stops developing and supporting a product ? There isn't any doubt about Adobes intentions, they abandoned Flash and now Air, which is fine, but it blows my mind how you can call this anything but.

I can be wrong, but I think it's worse then any of you think. I believe this move is entirely about letting Adobe AIR fail in a way that doesn't hurt Adobe. I don't think Harman "aquired" or "bought" the tech, they might even get paid for taking in on, or maybe Adobe holds shares of Harman or is planning to aquire shares in the near future. This sounds a bit tinfoily .. but on the other hand, what other plausible explanations are there ? "We took it because we like it" isn't sufficient for a company.

[kheftel]

you could of course be right, time will tell. It could be the equivalent of putting it out to pasture, or it could be like when macromedia sold flash to adobe years ago (macromedia ceased supporting flash at that point but didn't "abandon" it, wouldn't you say?).

In the end, we're all just speculating, and it's really nice having Andrew here to say something, ANYthing, from the inside, it's been awhile since we've had any communication at all from the people who actually know stuff about what's going on.

I agree with ASWC that marketing is super important if you actually want the thing to live on. Adobe didn't market AIR even in its heyday, for some reason this great crossplatform technology stayed pretty hidden and unknown to anyone outside the developer community. I think a lot of developer angst over the years has come from feeling like the bastard stepchildren of Adobe's ecosystem, a great technology that no one's using cuz no one's ever heard of won't go anywhere, and now time and momentum are against you, as with adobe's lack of communication, the passionate dev community has been dwindling, and even the diehards are starting to go elsewhere.

For me professionally, I am glad my legacy AIR mobile games will live on, but we're probably going to port most of them to HTML5/cordova (and some are already underway or done).

For me personally, I'll be cautiously watching this space to see if my unreleased projects warrant finishing and releasing under AIR or migration to something else.

Time will tell.

[PippoApps]

For the kind of business I work for, AIR is still the most convenient framework. Convenient to the point that other techs would make our products too expensive to be marketed. I didn't port anything out of AIR, and I refuse those kind of assignments. I prefer to build things in other techs from scratch, without going through the pain of spending 2 months to redo something that took me 2 weeks to do in AIR in the first place. Even Adobe had abandoned it, I would have continued to use it until the last possible moment. This is obviously possible in my business environement, not everywhere.  There are other tools for other jobs, and I understand if you have to invest the next 2 years on your own wallet on a product, you have to be cautions on which technology to use. HARMAN move is promising, and Andrew gave me enough reassurances in order to be optimistic for the future. Other than this would be like looking in the crystal ball to predict the future imho. I do hope pessimists made a wrong prediction. I am looking forward to work more activey with HARMAN. All of this to me, optimistic by nature, sound like good news.

[BBartonW]

@rewb0rn,  Where did you find Harman publishing:

     - Continued, long term support for Air on the currently supported platforms

I haven't found anything on support for Windows other than Adobe's basic security (limited to security fixes).

Thanks,

[hferreira80]

Seems that their primary focus is Android.

Why use AIR then !?

[Leo Kanel]

1. To support old apps which don't worth to re-write to other frameworks.
2. To get some more time to migrate to other frameworks
3. To continue using 33 for Android, 32 for the rest for one more year.

[hferreira80]

So, you just confirm what I said before.

AIR, it's in maintenance mode.

[Leo Kanel]

Well for me it has been for a while now Other people feel different.

[rewb0rn]

BBartonW​ Andrew from Harman has posted several times that they are going to take Air as a serious business and that they intend to pick it up from where it was left by Adobe. That includes current platforms for me. He also said that adding Linux as a new platform might be a possibilty at some point, since they support Air on Linux already for their business partners. That only makes sense if they keep Windows and Mac as well.

hferreirau80 and Leo Kanel: Nothing new to add? Still just repeating that Air is in maintenance and it is going down? Come on, I can just reopen any generic post from you guys from one year ago and it will be the exact same discussion. Harman taking over from Adobe is huge news for us and I am super excited that Air has been picked up. Don't spoil it, thanks.

[hferreira80]

rewb0rn​ Have an opinion, oppositive of yours and don't follow the flock, it's spoil it ?

Are you afraid of something ?

You if look carefully, you will see that you are wrong (at least about my self).

I became more actively on the last few months but I use AIR for years.

I started with Flash/Flex for Web and get rid of it many years ago (Adobe fault).

I started with AIR/Flex for Mobile since first beta version (loved it) and getting rid right now (Adobe fault).

Unfortunately, I still depend on AIR/Flex for Desktop (that's not a priority for Adobe and seems not for the new father), so I still use the version 30.

I don't have anything against AIR but only the Adobe managing the runtime and don't give support (completed abandon this official forum).

This is not normal.

And if you look carefully, you will find in recently posts, that I told that this final move have a tinny and very delayed chance to AIR but it's a chance so my speech is not always the same like you stated.

[KramSurfer2]

rewb0rn   "Andrew from Harman has posted several times"

Can you link these posts please. I'm excited for change as well.  Just don't know where you are seeing this...

Thanks

[Flipline]

For anyone wondering about finding Andrew's comments, have you signed up on the Harman website to get email updates from them?  Andrew has already sent out two emails detailing their processes and timelines, on the Starling forum you can find users have pasted the email contents into the discussions here:

First email:

https://forum.starling-framework.org/d/21728-the-future-of-adobe-air/13

Second email with some updates/changes to timeline, pricing, and targets:

https://forum.starling-framework.org/d/21728-the-future-of-adobe-air/51

[BBartonW]

Flipline​, thank you for your post. In the forum you referenced I found this excerpt, I believe from an Andrew email, about platforms.

In terms of platforms supported, we are just starting off with Android, but are internally now ramping up on iOS as well so we will include that in the SDK later in the year; desktop platforms are slightly less of a priority as Adobe are continuing to support these but they are on the plan for the end of the year. We’ll look into whether there are any changes needed for iPadOS, and – while we can’t yet promise anything – we can also see if it’s viable to bring back a Linux version of AIR.

So I take that as there being a quite reasonable possibility that Harman will support Windows in the future. A good bit of information to have while deciding whether I need to jump ship or not.

[KramSurfer2]

rewb0rn   Thanks, I signed up but havn'tgotten an email.. I'll re sign

[Leo Kanel]

I don't really care about what you say, as you are untitled to your own opinion as I am to mine. Back in AIR 30, when I said that something is wrong and ANRs jumped, you tried to convince me otherwise in github. If it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it most probably is a   .

I still use flex and contribute to the flex community (and Royale), but I accept reality for what it is.

The fact that last year as a CTO I opened 6 positions for AIR devs, yet I didn't find any but when I did the same this year for react native I got almost a hundred CVs says a lot about the situation we are.

I am happy harman picked up AIR to save it from Adobe, but i am not delusional, that it will become the next big thing and it will support consoles, linux, new platforms etc.

[ASWC]

Huge news for you? In what way? If it's because there will be a solution for Android deadline then yes in that sense it's huge news. If it's because AIR might get saved from oblivion then that's going to be easier said than done. HARMAN is picking up AIR at its lowest point ever (thanks Adobe), what can they truly do from there is anyone's guess but the challenge is simply enormous. I can see hope but excitement I really don't get that. Do you really not see how difficult this is going to be for HARMAN? If so then what do you think their chances of bringing back AIR to the top really is: 90%? 100%? For the record at this point my guess is about 5% and I'm being generous.