Simeon Says

I will be the first to admit that I have been openly harsh and possibly mean about the policies at Adobe regarding the management of the Flex SDK. I criticized that the planning was done behind closed doors with no input from the community. I criticized that they were not open to feedback or contributions to the community. I still stand by those accusations.

But I am also amazed at how much can change in a month. To be honest, I would never have imagined that such changes could have come about so quickly in such a large organization. Which stands to reason that the changes that have been made were put into motion long before i started ranting.

What changes is it I am talking about? Well for starters the Flex team held an Open Forum meeting where the community could come together in a connect room and voice their concerns. Over 200 people attended that meeting and while it was a bit loud and hard to organize I think it was very productive. In that meeting they stated their intention to start holding Open Iteration meetings and designated the first public one in about 6 weeks. But low and behold not two weeks later did we have our first Open Iteration meeting where we found out what the priorities of the team where and who was in charge of what features for the coming iteration of development. In addition to that Matt Chotin posted the notes from the Architecture Review Board meetings to the wiki so we could review and comment on them. There are even items up for review that have not yet had a resolution so we can actually provide feedback in the work yet to be done.

I have been quoted all over the internet saying that the open source nature of the Flex SDK project is a “complete failure”. When I made that statement I meant it with all my heart. I could not have dreamed that the project I am so passionate about could ever have seen such amazing changes in such a short time.

So to the Adobians who read this, I formally rescind my statement of the open-ness of the project being a “complete failure”. And in fact I want to thank you for all the extra work you have done to set the record straight and allow the community to contribute and help guide the project which we are so obviously passionate about.

And to the community, its time to put our money where our mouth is and get involved.