So,
AIR 2.7 is out. Yay! iOS generated apps now 4x faster. Yay! Echo cancellation. Yay! Android apps now can be installed on the SD card. Yay!
Adobe has dropped AIR for Linux desktops. Ya.., Sorry,
what?
We will no longer be releasing our own versions of Adobe AIR and the AIR SDK for desktop Linux. [...] The last Adobe release of AIR for desktop Linux is AIR 2.6.
Ouch.
So, Adobe has crunched some numbers and apparently AIR downloads for Linux represent less than 1%. Clearly not a huge market, you cannot argue with that. However, is it all about the numbers? Where has it gone all that "we are truly cross-platform" mantra? What about those continuous integration servers that need to run unit tests and automated testing tools such as Selenium? What about the Flash developers running Linux that develop AIR apps that are later run on Windows, Macs, Android...?
Hard to argue that the end user is not screaming for Linux support, but not so sure about developers. Out of 6 devs in my team, we have 3 Ubuntus, 2 Macs and 1 Windows.
Also, what about companies that have gone for AIR since even if it wasn't providing a native experience, at least it was serving the majority if not all of their customer base? Companies like
Pandora or the
New York Times have *paid* AIR applications that now they cannot sell to 1% of their user base.
Uncool.
However.
What Adobe says now is that whoever wants AIR running on their OS should join the
Open Screen Project and code the final integration layer themselves. This is how Google and RIM have Flash and AIR running on Android and the Playbook, for example.
I can only see one Linux distro stepping up for their users and doing the job: Ubuntu. But, would they? Would they put time and effort into supporting a proprietary technology that doesn't offer a native experience for their users or rather support Open Source alternatives of the most successful AIR apps currently being used?
I guess the answer is: depends. Depends in the amount of complains they get from their users, the amount of work involved in doing the port, the actual support that Adobe offers during the process,...
Well, since email is free I've sent an email to the Ubuntu man himself,
Mark Shuttleworth. Let's hope first we convince Claire (his PA) that this is an important matter, then that Mark gets to read the email, then that he thinks it's worth answering back, then that he think this is of utmost importance for Ubuntu and finally let's hope we get AIR 2.7 for Linux desktops in a couple of weeks.
Yeah, let's hope.