The team behind open-source Flash alternative LightSpark pushed out a new bug-fix release a few days ago. Seeing as we're a few releases in, I felt now was a prime time to see just how well LightSpark performs against its proprietary counterpart -

OpenSource Flash player implementation ‘Lightspark’ has entered beta. It is “…an open source Adobe Flash implementation, designed from the ground up to be efficient on current and (hopefully) future hardware.”

It was just earlier this month that we were talking about Lightspark. This morning the 0.4.4 release has even made it out the door.

The long term objec­tive of this project is not only to deliver a free as in free­dom flash player, but also to give to the Flash tech­nol­ogy the dig­nity of a real open stan­dard. I really believe Flash is a pow­er­ful tech­nol­ogy, it’s main weak­ness being it’s closed­ness.

I’ve released ver sion 0.4.0 of Lightspark, a free flash player imple men ta tion. This release was focused on improv ing sta bil ity, so all the crashes found by many testers should be fixed now.

LightSpark 0.4.0 - an open source Flash player implementation - has been released.

The latest version of the Lightspark open source Flash player adds better compatibility for YouTube videos and sound synchronisation support

"...Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe software players and video tools..."

Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe software players and video tools. We imagine that Adobe has no illusions that this will stop copyright infringement -- any more than dozens of other DRM systems have done so -- but the introduction of encryption does give Adobe and its customers a powerful new legal weapon against competitors and ordinary users through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).