Adobe Flash
After a comment on a previous post from George Medve on Flash I though it best to share my take on it. I’m doing this as a post because it’s probably of interest to some people who wouldn’t read the comments on the other post;
In terms of Flashes security, I think this article says it all. 2 days ago Adobe were patching a bug which could crash machines and/or allow remote users to take control. Yes, that’s a Windows thing, but, after the years of development Flash has had it strongly indicates to me that the development and testing processes involved in a flash release are not of the level I want for software that integrates into software I use for a fair amount of my time working.
At a higher level Flash, to me, is the worst kind of software; A black box with no alternatives. The source code isn’t public so it can’t be crawled over and checked for issues by third parties, and if you want flash you are locked into a monopoly; there is only one source for a viable player, and monopolies are a situation that’s known to be so bad for consumers that many countries outlaw them.
Yes, Javascript can cause issues, but I can also change my browser. I’ve had problems with some Javascript in Safari which worked in Chrome, Firefox, or even, as a last resort, IE, but with flash if it doesn’t work on your platform you’re stuffed.
Add to that the number of iOS devices which don’t have flash, and Adobe withdrawing from the Android space, you can guarantee that any site which relies on flash isn’t going to work on mobiles, and in this day and age that’s a very dumb move.
So there you have it, the reason Flash is uninstalled from any and every machine I have. Hopefully it’ll shed some light on why I have the views I do about it.