A couple of months ago I was asked by Adobe to write an article about FlashObject for their Devnet site. I happily agreed, as the Devnet site is pretty high visibility in the Flash community, and it would really get the word out about FlashObject.
So I wrote the article – nothing too spectacular, just a spiffed up version of the existing FlashObject page. Then I waited. Then came a very odd e-mail: their legal department didn’t like that I used the word “Flash” in the project name, and asked if I would be averse to changing it. Well, I’m not really attached to the name, so I considered it for a bit, but decided that changing the name would be too much hassle, especially since so many people are already using the script and it’s gained quite a word of mouth following. So I imagined that all the people that know about it would hear all about this new great script called SWFObject and think it was some new thing. I can see the conversation now. “No thanks, I don’t need to use SWFObject, I already use FlashObject, and it’s just fine.”
Well I asked Adobe to compromise, and possibly give me permission to use the Flash name. I offered to place a little tag-line along with all the information about it, something like “Flash is a registered trademark of the Adobe Corporation, used with permission.” (Or something like that, you get the point).
Well, a few weeks have gone by, and tonight I finally got the response back: No deal. Apparently Adobe is really clamping down on the people using the word “Flash” in their projects, even if they are open source. I’m not sure how this will affect other projects, or Flash communities (My guess is that communities like OSFlash and Flashcoders will be fine, but anything that distributes a product with the name “Flash” will need to change – but this is just a guess).
Needless to say, I’m slightly annoyed by all of this, but in the end it shouldn’t really affect the project all that much (I hope). Soooo starting immediately, and as I find time to update the documentation and code downloads, FlashObject is now known as SWFObject.* I’ll be updating the main page to redirect to http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/ in the next day or so. If you have links pointing to the old page, feel free to update the links and change your link text/other info to SWFObject.
* I’m not really a huge fan of the name SWFObject, but I want to keep the ‘Object’ part in there to at least keep some semblance of recognition in there for the users who are already using the script, or have already heard about it. I also hate when people pronounce SWF as “swiff”, but since this is the internet, it will be hard to force people to call it S.W.F. Object. And that takes more time to say than “S.W.F. Object” anyway. So feel free to call it “Swiff Object” when talking about it “in real life.”
UPDATE (4-27-2006): John Dowdell posted a bit more info about this on his blog. Go read the Adobe Trademark guidelines.
Hey man, that’s not good. I think that this attitude doesn’t help the community. We need support from Adobe, and not this kind of legal paranoia.
We, the developers, are investing our free time to create these open source projects that benefit the whole community and we do it because we love sharing with our peers what we build and give something useful back to them.
As I said, we put a lot of energy in those projects and the purpose of this is collaboration. We don’t want to steal anything from Adobe.
Changing all the names of the projects to something else will be a big task (time consuming) that you could use to generate more open source projects for the community.
In Addition if we use FlashOS, FlashObject Flash… It is because is easy to recognize the term. Making a search in google for Flash Open Source will return better result if we call our project FlashOS that if we call it something else.
Anyway I’m thinking that people from Adobe are more worried about this legal stuff than Macromedia was. I hope they change their mind.
That was my rant, sorry.
Why not call it ActiveObject and extend on just dealing with swf files. I’m really annoyed with the alerts I get in IE anytime I come to a QuickTime object. Something that dealt with all types active content would be really good.
This is kind of annoying. I’m not sure I understand really, can they make this happen legally? Will Flash Gordon’s name need to be changed? What about programs like “FlashGet” which is a download manager? I could go on. Or is this only a problem because it deals with flash compiled swfs specifically? I guess i’d have to see the email trail to get a better understanding although it probably wouldn’t be very cool to publicize that.
You have every right to be annoyed.
Bad form, Adobe, bad form. Very Microsoft-esque, stealing words like windows, access, heck, even word itself. I could see them complaining if you call it AdobeObject…but FlashObject?
What about all these projects? Are they gonna recieve legal threats as well?
AutoTestFlash, Flash JavaScript Integration Kit, FlashDevelop, FlashMyAdmin, Flashr, FlashTA, flashticle, Save Flash, Flash Effect Maker, FlashJester, Amara Flash News Ticker, 3dFlashBox, Flash Studio PRO, Flash Turbine, FlashDB, FlashForge, FlashMaster, Form2Flash, Flash Designer, Flash-Creator, FlashBuilder.
Never mind… your ****Object is just flashtastic. :)
Customer: I want a flash website.
Web company: Do you want a website that looks good, or do you want us to do that thing where we make a fancy animated thingymajig and show it on a web page?
@davr: They release special tool for developers on labs.adobe.com ;)
class com.adobe.LegalDepartment.ProductUtils
{
/*VERY!*/ private var MY_PRECIOUS:String = "flash";
public static var NEW_NAME:String = "SWF";
public static function flashName (oldName:String):String
{
return oldName.replace(new RegExp(MY_PRECIOUS, "gi"), NEW_NAME);
}
}
Why do people pronounce SWF as “swiff”? Because official SWF file format specs says “The Macromedia Flash file format (SWF) (pronounced “swiff ”)…” since version 3 (May 1998). So that’s the official correct pronunciation…
Best regards,
Burak
Sounds to me like Adobe’s legal department needs to have a good long talk with their PR department.
What really blows me away about this is that your object project is really helping Flash in a big way at an important time. I guess now that they have their little active content templates, the helpfulness of FO is not as needed.
I’m stunned.
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Flash is not a registered trademark of Adobe. Flash is too generic to be trademarked. Macromedia had “Macromedia Flash”. I would expect Adobe to grab “Adobe Flash” however it’s not listed in the uspto trademark search yet.
I wrote a bit more about this in my blog. I do not believe they’d have a legal case for forcing you to change (but I wouldn’t want to get into a legal battle with them either)
The unmentioned problem this causes is with people searching for information on ****Object. All the meaty historical stuff — be in on this blog, on other sites, or burried in mailing lists will be how to implement one item, or why we need to use one item, and then you have to search on the other name to get the newer stuff which for some time will be much less robust. All that right in the middle of the IE6/ActiveX changes when you may have the biggest group of fresh people looking for something like this.
Oh, and SWFObject is rather generic as well with goggle showing a few Java, C and other libs using it in their generation tools (apparently, thanks google!) but you probably already hit that.
That said, you do what you feel you gotta do.
So, when’s the article gonna be published?
Wow it looks like Adobe really dropped the ball on this one. FlashObject made detecting and embedding Flash painless and a lot less ugly than all the Flash embedding HTML templates that can be published from within the Flash IDE. It’s the best solution for dealing with the whole IE/Eolas/ActiveX issue. They should be thanking you, but instead they’re just hurting a well-established (176,000 results in google for “flashobject”), very useful project.
What a pain in the &#^$&#! So were they thankful at all for the great script you’ve developed? Or did they just jump all over you about the name? It’s funny that they would just now take notice. It’s been around for a while.
Oh, gotta go… ‘Jumpin Jack SWF’ is on TV! I think it’s a great flick with staying power, but most dismissed it as a ‘SWF in the pan’. This just in… Adobe to buy Swiffer WetJet brand and rename to SWFer! Oh, the insanity! I’ll be ‘back in a SWF’!
Poor form Adobe. I can understand if this was a competing product wanting to use a similar name, but it’s for your product? Now the entire community has extra work to do because you’re so anal you can’t let someone advertise your products name for you. This isn’t the way to endear your customers to you.
Jeff Houser, the term “Flash” with a capital “F” used in the context of the .swf file format, unfortunately has a copyright. Im not totally clear whether Adobe has rights over that or not, so I cannot say either way. But in either case, it is totally a PR boo-boo that Adobe is taking this route. But it is not unlike them to do that, Post-Script is a case in point, among numerous other intellectual copyrights. Expect Adobe to go completely Microsoft on all Macromedia projects, including Flex. It was a sad day when it was announced Adobe was to purchase Macromedia, a sad day indeed.
It’s sad, indeed, when you pitch in and support Macromedia/Adobe with a great approach to implementing Flash and the lawyers turn around and bite you in the butt. No good turn…
I hope you don’t let it get you down. What you’re doing makes a difference.
Shall it be then, the backlash begins? It is not too late for them to blow another foot off over the newly aquired products. Now is definitely not the time to go this route, as Microsoft will likely enjoy for us to use their new names for RIA tech quite fluently.(for at least a few years)
The funny thing would as part of backlash, people on purpose start renaming and creating products with Flash in the name just to cause even more havoc. :)
so why is codebase not specified in the object attributes?
Thanks Adobe for looking to support your community. I’ll remember that the next time I look to update InDesign and compare it to the new Quark — Quark also forgot about it’s user base some time ago. Now that I have a buggy CS 1, a buggy CS 2, and no universal update to CS 3 — is it really the time to push your base further away? Where’s a new underdog when you need one…
I feel your resentment. How important is it for you to post on their site anyway? So important that they want you to change your brand to suit their brand? Sounds like a Walmart negotiating technique.
With that said, being a newcomer to your class, and one who you’d want to attract by posting on Adobe.com, the name FlashObject is a bit vague in terms of its functionality. SwfObject is better, but why not something like JSwfDetect?
just a suggestion. best. Seth
You might find that they will try to get the “SWF” names as well.
ADOBE:
“No, You can’t name that SWFObject.”
Might.
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Lame, Adobe.
All said, I think SWFObject is better though, since I often use MTASC more than Flash IDE anyway :)
How important is it for you to post on their site anyway
This isn’t about posting an article on their site. That was just what brought it to the attention of the Adobe legal dept.
From the sound of things, everyone with a project with ‘Flash’ in the name may get cease & desist letters.
Thats it I quit flash. Lets all go use sparkle.
First, I want to say I am sorry you had to go through this ordeal. Second, I want to say I’m very dissapointed in Adobe regarding this action or should I say ‘re-action’ to the name FlashObject.
I had wondered when Adobe took over Macromedia, what types of things would shake down. I have been trying to approach the merger completely with an open mind and instead, look at the benefits that the combined organization will bring – which I do believe have the potential to be strong.
But things like this are the things I was concerned about. It seems the bigger a company gets, the more unrealistic they are when they are dealing with ‘human beings’. As someone else commented previously . . . very Microsoft-esque.
I think that is one of the things that was near and dear to web-developers in our relationship with Macromedia. They felt like a company that still had a sense of its place in the world – still had a heart and soul.
Initially when I started reading your post, I thought it was similar to the recent situation that happened with Apple. I am a life-long Apple fan, so was disappointed when I heard about a similar ‘legal letter’ sent to an 8-year old girl who had submitted ‘suggestions’ to Apple as a school project. She received a legal letter in the mail saying the suggestions weren’t solicited. The young girl was apparently devasated.
In the case of Apple, this is something they did to protect their interests. If by chance they were working on something that happened to already include the ‘suggestions’ the little girl had made, they wanted to make sure they were covered and not wrongfully accused of using the little girl’s ideas. The legal letter was a standard correspondence sent from the legal department.
At first, I thought you were in a similar situation – receiving a routine ‘legal letter’ from Adobe. But obviously this is not the case. You had correspondence with them. An actual back and forth discussion. What Adobe did was with full intent.
It makes no sense to me. Using the term Flash in names of products, portals, and other items only strengthens Flash’s marketplace. Ask the carryovers from Macromedia – they know this. There are so many projects and portals that include the phrase Flash or Actionscript, it would be hard to count them all. I can’t say I have run into anyone yet who has been confused and thought that these projects and/or portals were owned by Macromedia or Adobe. Looks like Adobe made a mistake in their actions they took with you.
Apple made good on their mistake. They clarified why they did what they did, and then a representative from Apple personally called the little girl to talk with her about what happened, and about the school project she did.
Adobe – what about you? Are you willing to make good on your mistake?
this is stupid, stupid adobe
Personally, I still think you should have called it Swfilis , and made little shirts that read ‘I spead swifilis’ and ‘I used flash and all i got was this case of swifilis’ . But maybe now you should rename it CorelObject or FlushObject.
I’m not a lawyer, but my friends are. Here’s what they said: There would have been absolutely no trademark dilution whatsoever if Adobe granted you explicit license to use the name.
I definately think this is going to cause problems. I am prone to using the word flash in my code, makes me feel all fuzzy, will I be forced to remove the word? Perhaps we should all start billing them for the time it takes to change the code on all our projects.
Geoff, why did you decide on SWFObject? I would have thought a name not related to Adobes products would have been more fitting. But what do I know, I get fuzzy by using the word flash in my code.
With expressinstall, it’s strange that with javascript disabled in the browser you get the same “flashcontent” as with an old or no flash player installed. Since these are two totally different things.
Two different Flashcontents:
In the case of ‘javascript disabled’ you should be able to display a ‘turn on javascript’ message. In the case of ‘old or no flashplugin’ you should display a message ‘upgrade flash’.
Digiguru: It just seemed like the best logical choice – in retrospect, it’s actually more accurate, because you are using it to embed a swf file, not a fla file. ‘Flash’ is the authoring tool, swf is the actual content. The confusion I think is how the player is called ‘Flash Player’ and not ‘SWF Player’.
I wanted to keep the ‘Object’ part of the name to try and salvage some regognition from people who have already used FlashObject.
dre: You can, just use a
noscripttag to show your ‘Turn on Javascript’ message, and place your ‘Get Flash Player’ message as normal HTML.Pingback: Just Another Rant
I think this is a case of the old guard getting in the way of the new guard. I had heard that one of the key reasons Adobe bought Macromedia besides getting Fl*sh was for the community that Macromedia had build. Adobe’s legal department is most likely used to pushing around the little guy’s out there. This is not how MM built its community, as can be seen by the CF shirts made by third parties and not stopped by MM for fear of trademark dilution. If Adobe truly cares about its community it will get out of the way of the folks that are actively supporting it… I mean goddamn, the guy even wrote an article with his own time for Adobe to post freely on their site. Lets all hope that some of the new gaurd can have some influence over these msft style practices.
Hey, I not a lawyer (I swear), but I know our legal system is kind of strange. I think there would be a problem if
Adobe were to pick and choose who they let use the name FLASH. If they want to keep one person from using it as in
naming a new software product “Sparkle, the Flash Killer”, it might be hard to do if you let other infringe on your
trademark without comment. Might not be true, but it wouldn’t suprise me.
The most stupid thing that I ever heard from Adobe.
Why he didn´t have good ideas, like macromedia do with “Flash”.
(ups!! I said “Flash”, Mr.Adobe should I pay for it?)
Of course. Is more easy bought “ideas”, than have one of those!
———————————————————————–
Lo mas sin sentido que he escuchado de Adobe.
Porque no tiene buenas ideas ?, como “Flash” . (huy he dicho “Flash”, Sr.Adobe tengo que pagar por esto ?)
Por supuesto, es mas fácil comprar “ideas” que tener buenas ideas.
Huh… Do you guys think I’ll have to rename “”FlashMagazine to “SWFMagazine” then? Nahh… I’m sure the former Macromedians can talk some sense into the Adobe Legal dept ;)
Like others, I also think that Adobe dropped the ball here. FlashObject tells you what it is. There are so many plugins out there that we need an easy way to distinguish them all.
Yes, I can see that SWFObject accomplishes the same thing, but really is it necessary? Free advertisement is a good thing especially when it’s word of mouth.
The only other real reason that I could see for this is search engine rankings. They would want to be on top for any search related to flash and have other “products” out there could push them further down in the listings. As far as for it causing confusion…really it would be immediately obvious that the script is not the app.
On a related note:
While I just noticed that someone mentioned Sparkle, has anyone thought that the reason Microsoft went with so extreme a change based on the Eolas lawsuit is because of their supposed “flash killer” Sparkle?
Jensa: I wouldn’t be surprised if you do, why wouldn’t they go after companies like Flash Kit too?
This is so dumb, Macromedia weren’t exactly a friendly company (unless you were part of their own cliquey inner community) but you’d have to think this wouldn’t have happened with them still in charge. This is a crucial time for flash and flash developers and they choose now to start something so pedantic as this?! Ridiculous.
I hope the people at DevNet at least sympathised with your situation and acknowledged how stupid it is, even if they couldn’t actually apologise.
How utterly frustrating.
Yeah, and they also dont want everybody to realize SWF means Shockwave Flash. Not “small web file” or whatever. Just look in any object tags at the codebase line.
SWF means Shockwave Flash
hey, what i guess, Adobe is creating something with same name FlashObject. like MM did with FlashCast from MDM. now we all know FlashCast is never shown Adobe product. but it does exist with FlashCast name :)
// chall3ng3r //
Hi Geoff – thanks for a wonderful piece of coding that’s helped me enormously – Just wanted to say how disgusted I am with Adobe’s behaviour over the use of the ‘Flash’ name – I am sick to the pit of my stomach with ridiculous corporate posturing like this. Please carry on, I’ll certainly do my part to tell everyone who cares about Adobe’s behaviour. They’ve lost one custmore for sure.
They’re probably posturing this way because they plan on incorporating it
in Flash 9 and don’t want any confusion. After all, they don’t want YOU
to get credit for Thier genius… (nnnice!)
actually macromedia does have a trademark and service mark on Flash, and they can do this… people need to study trademark law…
serial numbers
75336392
75336379
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark
Geoff,
Your FlashObject freaking rocks. We use it all the time and it works like charm.
How do you like and idea to create a petition to keep your great name alive:
http://www.petitiononline.com
Adobe just lose their credibility again
I don’t think any petitions would change their minds. I’ve already renamed everything, and it really wasn’t that much hassle on my end. Unfortunately, you all as users will have a bunch of renaming to do as well, but I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible.
Regardless of the name, it’s a great product. It’s all been said in other posts, but helping the Flash community like this is something Macrodobia should appreciate, not punish. Bravo to you for helping us all out!
“I also hate when people pronounce SWF as ‘swiff’, but since this is the internet, it will be hard to force people to call it S.W.F. Object. And that takes more time to say than ‘Swiff Object’ anyway. So feel free to call it ‘Swiff Object’ when talking about it ‘in real life.’
Careful Geoff…before you know it, Procter & Gamble, makers of the ‘SWIFFER’, will send you another threatening letter. ;-)