LCCS Alternatives

[Adobe_ejs]

Hi all,

You may have seen an email message earlier today from me describing our plans to shutdown the LCCS service on December 31st.    I would like to use this thread for the community to discuss alternatives.   There isn't a one-size fits all solution so I think it's useful to talk about a couple of different options.  You may discover others on your own so please post them here.  To get the discussion started, here's some things I've looked at.

• Open Source.  We have looked at this as an option and it's simply not viable for a number of reasons.   There are dependancies on third party and Adobe code that are extremely difficult to separate out.   Some of this code runs other services at Adobe that will continue to operate.
• Flash Media Server.  LCCS is an application built on top of FMS.   I've spoken with some customers that are planning to build the LCCS features they need on top of an FMS server.   Having spoken with the FMS product manager, I can say that FMS continues to have a roadmap and will be getting investment.   We will continue to sell it into the future.   I realize this option may not be viable for some because of the associated expense around licensing and hosting your own FMS server - which brings us to FMS hosting
• FMS hosting services:  http://www.influxis.com/ does FMS hosting.  There may be others that provide this service as well.   Please post others if you know of any. 

Also if you need further information from Adobe, I''ll do my best to dig it up.

Thanks,

Jeff

[tinylion_uk]

HI Jeff,

Thanks for your continued help with this. I fully understand many of these issues are totally out of your hands.

We do have an FMS Server, used in a different part of our company, and it’s as yet not something Ive been able to look at. There are others that are in charge of it.

What Im looking for is some understanding of how I would go about transferring our LCCS functionality onto the FMS server.

Bearing in mind that as of this moment I am starting from a point of zero FMS knowledge, apart from knowing it’s there and available for me to use.

The current FMS server in our company is used to with pre-built modules and we don’t have an FMS developer in house. It looks like Im about to become that person

Where do I even start lol

Initially, I would need to translate what we’ve been able to do with LCCS via our FMS Server.

Im really looking for any help, I can with this.

Bear in mind that today is effectively day one of my R&D time regarding this, and I thought contacting you could be a good start.

We have several projects that were due to be based around LCCS services that I now need to look at again with a view to running them via FMS.

My basic question, where do I even start J

Anything would be helpful, even a list of resources or possibly to make contact with others here who are about to start the same journey.

Thanks as always Jeff

Regards

Glenn

Tinylion uk

[jamieqho]

Hi Glen,

I would first start here and check if any of the FMS examples would help:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/samples.html

If you bought FMS, check their forum and see if there is support for developing some of the features you need.

-Jamie

[Adobe_ejs]

Hi Glen,

I've pinged the FMS team for any additonal resources on getting started with FMS.

I'll post them as soon as I receive them.

Jeff

[iBr3nt]

Hi Jeff,

Yes, anything that would give a one-to-one (or as close as can be) for using/creating components that fulfill the same functionality on FMS as LCCS would be great.

For example, what are the FMS equivelents to the LCCS SDK Navigator app that explains all the components we can use.

iBrent

[Former Community Member]

As far as I can tell, LCCS was built on FMS and an XMPP server. ( google XEP-60 for more detail on the XMPP angle )

My current plan is to use FMS or Red5 with Openfire or eJabberd. It'll also need some glue to tie authentication and screenshare into it.

I think with a bit of effort, I'll be able to reuse most of the LCCS client code and have a pretty stable, maintainable system.

Does any one else have any plans yet?

[Former Community Member]

http://www.tokbox.com/ is good alternative for video conf solution.. worth checking out

[Former Community Member]

Hello Jeff,

I am sad to learn about LCCS. Can you please tell me how we can continue to use screensharing on standard FMS?

[jamieqho]

Hi Alec,

I don't have any advice on implementing screen sharing but would this help you?

http://code.google.com/p/red5-screenshare/

-Jamie

[Former Community Member]

Hello Jamie,

I have implemented the screensharing feature for many customers of mine. And now am absolutely stuck. I don't mind using FMS 4.5 (Influxis etc.), but does screensharing work on them? This is going to be a huge loss for me

I don't know Java or any other language.

[joeflashTO2]

Jeff,

A few months ago at the Flex Summit, Adobe announced that it would donate LCCS to the Spoon project.

http://www.spoon.as/2011/flex-summit-live-updates-day-2/

"Adobe will do the following…

Open source contribution of related technologies:

blazeds.net, server-side AS, LCDS, LCCS, TLF, Gravity, FXG, OSMF"

Is Adobe still going according to this plan, or this yet another broken promise from Adobe?

Because quite franklly, replacing hundreds of thousands of dollars of code is not a feasible solution. And considering Adobe's recent track record at taking care of its customer base, neither is reverse-engineering something that works perfectly well to work with another Abode product (FMS) with a now very questionable lifespan. Either find a way to migrate it to Spoon, or sell it as a standalone product like FMS so that the millions of dollars the industry has spent developing for this technology will not go to waste. Anything less is simply abysmally irresponsible.

Please Adobe, I am begging you, do not shut this down without migrating it to spoon or offering it as a standalone product like FMS.

[adam_k]

+1 for joeflashTO2 .  this is astonishing.  hundreds of thousands indeed.  i'm too stunned to respond properly right now.

this is *so* incredibly irresponsible.  at least migrate to spoon.  that's the very, very least that adobe could do.  please, jeff, can you speak to this? 

[Adobe_ejs]

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to find out more about the posting from Spoon and will respond when I know more.

Jeff

[Adobe_ejs]

Hi,

I don't know anymore about the authors or context of the Spoon remarks.  However, the Flex whitepaper published by Adobe states that we are not contributing LCCS to apache:

""Adobe will not be contributing the AIR for Linux SDK, LCDS, or LCCS to Apache. Adobe is still investigating the viability of contributing TLF, BlazeDS.NET, Gravity, FXG, Squiggles, and OSMF.""

Whitepaper -- http://www.adobe.com/go/flex_whitepaper

I'll post again when I know more about the Spoon statements.

Jeff

[Former Community Member]

Jeff, what should I do about screen sharing? You need to provide us with an alternative. I have thousands of sites using my code which uses screensharing. Now what should I do? This is a disaster.

[joeflashTO2]

Thanks for the clarification Jeff. Oh well, for a while there was hope.

Personally I have absolutely no interest in alternatives. The is no reason nor excuse good enough to can a perfectly good technology which many companies have invested millions developing for. Adobe, please find a way for someone to take up the torch. You owe us, your loyal customers and clients, that much.

Thanks.

[Former Community Member]

Jeff, atleast allow us to create accounts for 3 more months. We have clients who use their own accounts for using our component. Now without account creation option, they are stuck and our component is rendered USELESS.

Adobe is ruining our business completely. We are really small and now we can no longer sell our component. I'm at loss of words. How can you have a migration plan so sudden. Google and all other companies offer a plan of atleast 6 months.

[mlabriola]

All-

Just a clarification from someone in the room that day. Adobe didn't say they would donate LCCS to Spoon.

First, Spoon is not the recipient of any code donations at all. Any code that Adobe has donated is to Apache, not to Spoon.

Now, the post being refered to is badly worded. It is actually not so much a post as just a live blogging of the events and slides of the summit as they were appearing. Here is the wording from that post and I added some clarification in square brackets [].

Adobe will do the following…

- [Determine] Whether FalconJS can be contributed before Falcon AS is complete

- Plan for when we contribute Falcon AS via Apache

- [Establisn the] Duration of runtime support commitment for Flex applications

- [Decide upon the] Availability and duration of new and renewed Adobe Flex SDK support contracts

- [Evaluate whether they will make] Open source contribution of related technologies:

blazeds.net, server-side AS, LCDS, LCCS, TLF, Gravity, FXG, OSMF

The audience asked about LCDS, LCCS, TLF, FXG, OSMF, etc. on Day 1 and Adobe didn't have an answer. On Day 2 Adobe came back and said they still could not answer. However, they made a todo list of things they would do... that is the list you see above. So, it was on their to-do list to get us final answers on these items, but they didn't say they would give it to Spoon or Apache.

On that list so far, they have finsihed the first 4 tasks as of the Flex whitepaper. For the 5th task, the open source one, they made a commitment on BlazeDS, however, no final answer has been given on the others to the best of my knowledge.

If you want to see it yourself, I believe this is all in the last 45 minutes or so of the videos from day 2.

Mike

[Former Community Member]

Jeff,

I appreciate your ongiong help in trying to find an alternative for us.  I think going through an FMS hosting service would be the best option.  My only question is how do we set up the backend so that it can talk to the client and allow all the features we currently enjoy (i.e. video, chat, whiteboard, etc...) as well as room provisioning?  I do not want to go through ten different 3rd party solutions to get all the feratures LCCS supports.  It's not only a waste of time/money on our end, it's also a waste of thousands of man hours of coding by the Adobe engineers.  I want to use the LCCS front end as is!  Will you be offering the code/installation instructions so that we can get this set up on FMS?  I don't need account management or billing, just the LCCS functionality.

Thanks,

Matt

[coulix]

Hello I am the creator of edoboard.com

For us it will be the end of the product I have no time to reinvest to find & develop an alternative solution.

However I found that UC engine may matches some of the features needed http://ucengine.af83.com/ to do a porting.

In the meantime I will prepare a 'memorial page' with videos of the product .

[Former Community Member]

Hi Jeff,

would Adobe consider selling or licensing the LCCS source if a company would be interested in carrying the LCCS business forward?

I don't talk about my company, but there seems to be quite an interrest for LCCS, so maybe a company like Influxis would be interested to take over.

It would be a win/win for everybody because some have invested a lot in LCCS...

If it could be an option, and you announce that, we could forward the message to potential acquirer.

Dimitri K.