We’ve been expecting this for some time. Macromedia has released an updated EULA for the Components provides with Flash MX 2004. Read more about it here and here. The new EULA addresses many of the issues with the previous one but still leaves some issues unresolved. I miss the days when there was no EULA on the components and framework 
Update: Check out this post too by Grant which includes some analysis on the update EULA here.
interesting… and welcome. i see no problem with the providing material value – makes sense to me. does this mean they can be sold?
Yeah you can sell your own components. The main issue is the ability to modify the v2 framework. Depending on your reason you want to make modifications to that framework, you may find the EULA restricting.
i just read grant’s take on it – and yes, it’s opened up, but not all the way to make the way through comfortable.
I’ll reply to Grant’s posting there, but want to reply here as well. We did a lot to open up the EULA for the 90% case that people needed. We feel pretty good about the changes and they will allow you to use our framework (modified all you want) to make your own components. You can do anything you want with the components you make: sell them, trade them, give them away. That was the goal for modifying the EULA.
We didn’t go so far as to open up the Framework to be modified and distributed. We worried a lot that doing this would create complete changes to people’s systems and that could cause competing frameworks to create a lot of confusion and bugs. When people spend hours troubleshooting problems with incompatable frameworks, it won’t be a good experience for anyone. We realize that by allowing people to distribute components based on modified framework code we are allowing this to happen a bit, but we thought we’d test the process a bit before opening it up all the way.
So, I hope you feel we’ve taken a good and right step in the right direction. We’ll keep an eye on it and continue to do the right thing in the future.
Lucian Beebe
Flash Product Manager
Thanks for the comments Lucian. I know you guys have been trying hard and do appreciate all the effort you have given. It is a tough decision you guys have to make as a lot of the developers in the community are used to how the MX components/framework were licensed. It was open and free and everyone could do what they want. With that said, I don’t recall there ever being issues with competing frameworks back then. Macromedia’s version was the one that was always used by components distributed (that used any framework). The point of having the ability to distribute patches to the framework is one that can be debated by many and no side will win. We at times want to make enhancements/fixes to the framework and would like to distribute them to others legally.
Finally the EULA is pretty wordy/confusing. I had to read it several times to get it (I must be slow) and even then I wasn’t sure about some issues. For example, am I allowed to distribute an Fla with components? How about pro components? The reason I ask this is we need to distribute some sample applications and they rely heavily on the DataGrid component. Since there is no material improvement to the DataGrid in those sample application, is this allowed? I’m sure this is something everyone needs to do (actually many of us already do it because we assume you guys don’t *really* mind)
All in all I’m really glad Macromedia has made this change and it’s obvious that you guys have listened to most of our requests. This is definitely a step in the right direction.
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