I've made a bit of peace with AIR since my post earlier. The release notes actually do mention how to install it, and twhirl does work (pretty much, anyhow).
The ridiculousness of blowing away OOo does underscore that folks at Adobe don't work on Linux – doubtless they only really work on Mac and Windows. The fact that they never noticed they had murdered OOo proves it. They don't really understand free software (big surprise, they make their money selling Photoshop discs) and their AIR platform is a roach motel built to extend the life of their Flash development suite. Yes, certain segments are open source: big whoop, as long as the desktop runtime is closed, they can maintain their control. It's all about control. So no matter how shiny and quick and pretty they make AIR, it remains another boring proprietary trap.
Are people really going to fall for it again? Maybe, but they won't do it for long. Competing platforms will race AIR to the bottom, giving away as much as possible to gain developer mind share. Even Microsoft will eventually give away everything on Silverlight in a desperate bid to regain some sort of relevance in the world of developers under the age of 40. Gnash is catching up with Flash. Can Adobe keep running? Yes, but the question is how far.
So eventually AIR won't slag your Linux machine when you install it, and Adobe will have its cross-platform runtime dream. It'll even work, pretty much (those operating system-specific chrome APIs will be the death of them, I swear). But there is no long-term reason the development community will want to paint itself into this corner: there are just too many attractive options. They're going to have to bow to free software sooner or later, and by delaying the inevitable they're missing an opportunity to gather early, unanimous support.
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