From The Register's article entitled "Adobe cites bad blood for closed Flash"

Adobe Systems' Flash has long dominated PCs and the web, but the company has been under slowly mounting pressure to open source the player's source code.

This came to a head recently when Dion Almaer, co-founder of Ajaxian.com and Google's open web advocate, delivered a talk on the state of AJAX at Google Developer Day in London. I asked Almaer why Google makes little use of Adobe Systems' Flash, YouTube aside, and he gave a forthright answer.

Flash is not "open enough," he said, explaining that the Flash player is not open source and its development is not driven by the community. Google likes the technology, he added, and its closed-source status is a matter of ongoing discussion.

I am as pro-Open Source as a person can be but this type of thing bothers me. 

When Mr. Almer says Flash "isn't open enough" I wish someone had countered with "as opposed to what?"  Certainly not AJAX (Google's tool of choice).  It's not like you can make changes to what's going on in Javascript or change the way an XMLHttpRequest is executed. 

CSS 2 was feature complete in 1998 and browsers still don't implement it right.  CSS 3 has been in development for just about ever and doesn't appear close to being done much less implemented.  I guarantee, GUARANTEE Adobe would implement features requested by Google faster than the standards group behind CSS could get it approved and implemented into all the major browsers.

So how exactly is AJAX preferable to FLASH on the "Open Scale"?

I mean, the whole benefit of open source is the ability to add things when you need them.  If Flash, closed source as it is, can implement features faster than wouldn't it be the better solution?

The problem with this, and a lot of the openness talk, is that the solution has become separated from the problem being solved.  If you focus on the actual problem (getting new features implemented in a timely manner) Adobe's Flash wins hands down.  But people have become so obsessed with the word "Open" that they've forgotten why they wanted openness in the first place.