Apache moves Flex forward, should Flash be next?

Some say Macromedia-developed Flex framework and Adobe Flash are now irrelevant. But not current steward of Flex, Apache Software Foundation, which this week elevated the Flex SDK to a top level project and updated the code for Flash 10.2-11.5 and Java 7

The Apache Software Foundation is once again trying to resurrect a once-hot technology project developed by Macromedia and purchased by Adobe.

To that end, the ASF announced this week that Flex has been elevated to a Top Level Project from incubation and the availability of Apache Flex 4.9 with support for Flash versions 10.2 through 11.5 as well as support for Java 7 for compiling the SDK.

The future of Adobe Flash, and of course Flex, has been heavily debated with the emergence of HTML 5 and other web app dev technologies. Nevertheless, there are strong backers who maintain that there's still a place for Flash and Flex. Flex was donated to the ASF in late 2011.

Flex is an open source software development kit for deploying cross platform rich web applications based on Flash.

Might be nice for Adobe to donate Flash to the ASP, though it's not clear how much of the proprietary Flash and AIR components are part of the company's new lineup of HTML5-based Edge tools.