Adobe and Mozilla to Open Source Flash Player Scripting Engine

Adobe Systems Incorporated and the Mozilla Foundation today announced that Adobe has contributed source code for the ActionScript™ Virtual Machine, the powerful standards-based scripting language engine in Adobe® Flash® Player, to the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla will host a new open source project, called Tamarin, to accelerate the development of this standards-based approach for creating rich and engaging Web applications.

The Tamarin project will implement the final version of the ECMAScript Edition 4 standard language, which Mozilla will use within the next generation of SpiderMonkey, the core JavaScript engine embedded in Firefox®, Mozilla’s free Web browser.

As of today, developers working on SpiderMonkey will have access to the Tamarin code in the Mozilla CVS repository via the project page located here. Contributions to the code will be managed by a governing body of developers from both Adobe and Mozilla.

Tamarin implements the ECMAScript standard used by languages such as JavaScript, Adobe ActionScript, and Microsoft JScript, the primary languages developers use for building rich Internet applications. Adobe and Mozilla are both active participants in the ECMA International Programming Language technical committee (TC39-TG1) developing the ECMAScript Edition 4 (ES4) standard.

“There is nothing better for a standard than to have it implemented in multiple products,” said Jan van den Beld, Secretary General, Ecma International. “Adobe is taking a huge step forward in driving standards-based Web development by open source licensing their virtual machine technology.”