LCCS , no longer a going concern?

[TVonthemob]

So I have a project I have been working on for a few months, wrapping my head around Flex to get to LCCS because I felt the price was right and the capabilities were strong.  I have been sensing blood in the water over this with the recent Flash/Flex changes , but SDK's have been rolling along.  So I called my sales to guy to inquire about the mobile LCCS sdk / switching to commercial service as I want to deploy some stuff outside.   Since mobile is the target of my work really.  I have been told as of tonight that the actual mobile sdk is not going to be released.  Nigel is gone, which doesnt sound promising for the whole concept.  They have replaced him so I am sure there are steady hands at the wheel, but man I feel like I have wasted a few months.  Anyone else have any better information?  I hope we can ask nicely enough that they keep this stuff in development and extend it to mobile.  Greedily, I just want webcamera , audiosubscriber, audiopublisher, maybe shared whiteboard but I could be happy without it.  I actually would be happy if they just gave me some detailed samples to extend the non optimized version with microphone classes. I want to 4.6 to extend the torch on the device hopefully with a native extension.

[daddychico01]

I am about to sign up with LCCS, but I just noticed this thread.

I am building a peer to peer multi-user chat.

Does your message mean that I will not be able to sign up with your product?

Will there be another way to create multi-user chat using Adobe products ( similar to "tinychat.com" ) ?

Are you dropping real-time video altogether?

Or will I be able to create a product with Adobe software if I set up a streaming server or use another service?

[Raff_]

No, you can still sign up for a developer account and convert it to paid account when you need to and no, we are not dropping real-time video alltogether.

If you want to build your own server / services you can use Flash Media Server 4.5, that support peer-to-peer either hosted by you or by other providers as long as you can write / install the required server-side application.

[Eric_J_Bloms]

Hi guys just a quick question:

Will the recording feature be supported in its current state?  Or will I need to start work on a custom solution?

Thanks,

-Eric J Bloms

[adam_k]

seconding the request for comment on the recording feature - is it still going to be available?  kind of important to know..

[Raff_]

We are not removing or disabling any existing/released features. And recording was the last big released feature.

[Mickey79]

Hello,

Can you clarify this please , first it was stated that

"We will continue to support the existing paying customers that are already using LCCS. However, we can confirm that at this point we are not accepting new enterprise customers.",

then later it is mentioned that

"Like Raff said we have not made any changes with respect to accepting paid memberships.  "

So, can I become a paying customer?

Also, how long will the review take mentioned by Jeff. It has been a few weeks now since it was started...

[TVonthemob]

I was able to become a paying customer but had issues using firefox on snow

leopard. I was able to complete my purchase utilizing firefox on lion so

good luck or just try another browser.

Anthony

[Adobe_ejs]

Hi Mickey79,

We are still accepting credit card purchases at this point, but are not accepting any large enterprise customers deals at this point.  The enterprise deals are a type of volume license - direct contracts with Adobe.

The review will take a couple of more weeks.   Adobe is shutdown for the holidays right now.

Jeff

[suryalight]

Hi Jeff,

As the holidays are now over so can you tell me that will adobe will close the LCCS  now or not as i have to devlop a group video chat using RTMFP but i was thinking to use your LCCS service and was in mood of suggesting to my company to bought the account for that but if you are closing it then i will suggest them to buy FMS4.5 licence and then will develop accordingly as for currently we are using WOWZA for streaming.

I will really appriciate your quick Reply.

Surya

[Adobe_ejs]

Hi Surya,

I'm still working through some of this and will try to get more information out shortly.  I apologize for the delay, it's taking longer than I anticipated.   My recommendation is to explore other options as we are not doing any enhancements to LCCS. 

FMS4.5 would be a good option for you to explore.

Jeff

[Former Community Member]

Jeff,

Pardon me, but I simply cannot believe what I'm hearing.  I have been working on a site using LCCS for almost a year, and now you guys want to pull the rug out from under it.  If LCCS is not profitable, I could see Adobe wanting to scale back a bit, but from the looks of this forum, I would guess that hundreds, if not thousands, of people depend on this service!  The fact is, for many of us there are simply no cost-effective, easy to implement alternatives.

You suggest deploying our own server running FMS, but who is going to pay the huge cost for an FMS account or spend the time it will take to reinvent the wheel to set up messaging and room allocation?  This is simply unacceptable!

Steve Jobbs comes out with his slanderous (and ridiculous) attacks against Flash and Adobe and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose!  And this is coming from a guy who has practically cornered the smart phone market and has no problem making billions from apps. developed in his "proprietary" programming language which are sold in his "Apps. Store"!  What is going on here?

As it stands now, there are simply no feasible alternatives to Flash based Video Chat apps. and services like LCCS make them accessible to low-budget startups like myself!

Please tell me you will at least keep the service going for the time being.  I'm sure at some point, another alternative will present itself, perhaps based on HTML5/?, but for now LCCS is all many of us have!

Thank you,

Matt

[JoshRWeinstein]

+1

[Adobe_ejs]

Matt/Josh,

I appreciate that you are passionate about LCCS.  I'm trying to find viable alternatives and that's why it's taking longer than expected.  As you know the service is still running today, we are not going to suddenly shut it off.  So as of today, nothing has changed. However, as I said earlier, we are not enhancing LCCS further.  I believe Surya was looking for an honest answer and recommendation and in this case it sounds like FMS might be a viable alternative for a new project.

I'd prefer to keep the dialog open and honest and not debate Steve Jobs or the profitability of LCCS.

jeff

[Former Community Member]

Jeff,

Thank you for your quick reply!  Also, I do appreciate that you are working to find alternatives for us.

"I'd prefer to keep the dialog open and honest and not debate Steve Jobs or the profitability of LCCS."

Sorry about that, however I'm sure you can understand my fear and frustration.

I look forward to hearing from you as soon as you have any updates.

Thanks again,

Matt

[Adobe_ejs]

Yup, I totally get it.  Again sorry for the delay.

I'll work on getting an update out soon.

Jeff

[Mickey79]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for working on this.

If all else fails, please make sure to release the source code for the LCCS server which as I understand is an extension to FMS so we can host it ourselves.

There is simply no alternative these days to such a service online. And lets be honest HTML5 is still a few years away.

Cheers

[Former Community Member]

hey Jeff,

I appreciate the candor.

Has anyone looked at Red5 / OpenFire ( http://code.google.com/p/redfire/ ) as a potential replacement?

-sandy

[tinylion_uk]

There are a lot of us in the same boat here.

Can’t you just sell us the back end.

I so don’t want to go and have to write all that code

Having said that Ive no idea what back end is powering LCCS

But I’d like to know and know if there is any way we can individually host our own instance of whatever it is adobe is doing. Just enough to attach our projects, not the whole reseller do-dads.

My head aches at the thought of having to re-write the services to get parity with what we have now.

I know the devs at Adobe feel our pain. After all its their babies that are being canned. Projects they have invested care and attention to. And also things they have evangelised and kind of make promise about. I wouldn’t be a dev at Adobe working on any area of Flash for any money right now.

I just had a head ache for months now. And it’s not looking like it’s going to go away any time soon.

I understand how Jeff feels, having to give us this news because on a daily basis Im talking to clients and having to tell them some grim news myself off the back of all this.

I think I may start looking in the Help Wanted section of the paper. Maybe it’s time I became a gardener or something. Anyone interested in buying about 50 flash and Flex books?

[suryalight]

Thanks Jeff for your So Prompt Reply and the Honest answer that i was

really looking for. I would also appreciate if you can tell me that

weather adobe is thinking of closing the Flash itself so that i can start

trying to learn some other skill as I left .Net for the Love of Flash.

and in the Process of mastering Flex.

@Sandy_Lerman

We are looking for RTMFP base video chat and upto my knowledge RED5 Doesn't

Supports RTMFP if it Does then please provide us the link for it so the me

and Other guys can try to achieve LCCS Quality solution for us.

Surya

[Former Community Member]

Red5 doesn't fo FTMFP, but if you're brave, you could try Cumulus.

https://github.com/OpenRTMFP/Cumulus

[Former Community Member]

I would like to know this as well, however, I think Adobe would be making a very big mistake if it

completely pulled it's support for Flash!  Again, there are simply no viable alternatives for certain

things Flex/Flash can do.  Everyone who's ever worked with Javascript knows that it is a hideous

mess, and HTML5 isn't fully implemented/supported yet.  I think many in the web development

industry are jumping the gun right now and chasing after a "better" solution for building RIAs that

simply doesn't exist right now.  Like Adobe engineer/Flash evangelist Lee Brimlow says, "Flash

isn't going anywhere for a while."  If Flash support dies, then in many ways the Internet moves back

to the proverbial "stone age" - at least in the short term!