Right, and that's why I phrased it as I did. I agree with the great grandparent, kind of—if you have the ability to use 100% open technologies, you absolutely should, and power to you!
But at the same time, proprietary technologies rules much of our world, back then, now, and likely in the future.
The difference between SWF and code written for RISC archtiectures is options. The "single-company-owned" part is what killed SWF.
If there had been multiple SWF engines out there, to a common interpreter protocol, SWF content might have had a better chance of outliving the death of Adobe Flash.
That's a fair point. I suppose it's not even guaranteed with FOSS, but open source makes it much easier to not have one company totally control the software/ecosystem, if nothing else because it keeps forking as an option.
But at the same time, proprietary technologies rules much of our world, back then, now, and likely in the future.