To Flash or not to Flash?

I've never loved Flash too much. It's a proprietary technology, the player is not available on any platform and it's closed source, it's heavier than plain HTML, it doesn't inter-operate too much with the rest of the system (just think about the cut and paste from Flash...).

In the last weeks, however, I changed a little bit my position especially on one aspect of the web: the video and audio streaming. It is true that Flash is proprietary, but if Adobe provides the player, it just works.

To the opposite, I often have many problems with the proliferation of the audio/video codec. It's a real pain to deal with dozens of codecs: you never know if you have the right one, if you're breaking any patent or if your browser's plugin will support the movie or not.

I really don't understand why Adobe doesn't release the code of the player. It would help a lot the diffusion of Flash and they would have a better product with lesser efforts. I hope this will happens soon.