Submitted by: kirkland on Tuesday November 07th, 2006 at 06:49 PM EST

Adobe Systems Inc. is contributing some of the computer code behind its widely used Flash player to the Mozilla Foundation so that it can be improved upon and blended into an upcoming version of Mozilla's Web browser, Firefox.

The donation, to be announced today at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, represents the largest contribution of code to Mozilla since the Mountain View, Calif.-based foundation's 2003 inception. The code covers the scripting language in Adobe's Flash software, which millions of people use to view online media and other dynamic applications delivered over the Internet.

San Jose-based Adobe, best known for its programs Photoshop and Acrobat, picked up the Flash software last year as part of its $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia Inc.

With the Mozilla contribution, Adobe becomes the latest major software company to throw its support behind open-source software, a concept founded on the belief that a global community of independent programmers can improve computer code by freely sharing their work.

» Full story @ Seattle PI