I see it more like the Chesterson's Fence argument. Flash exists, and continues to plague us, because it met a need for developers that wasn't met in other ways. If that need still exists, rather than remove Flash (can the capability with it) and replace it with the same capability but with a much reduced attack surface.

I think that would be an excellent project for someone, if you should both show all of Flash's capabilities implemented in Rust and that the result was safer it would be an excellent endorsement of Rust. It could also illuminate end user features which can never be made safe. Also good for the overall body of web knowledge.

> Flash exists, and continues to plague us, because it met a need for developers that wasn't met in other ways.

Emphasis on "met". I've yet to come across a function that can be built in Flash, but not in HTML 5. In fact, I'm not using flashplayer at all anymore and I don't suffer. (There are a few video sites that are still Flash-only, but `mpv --ytdl` works around that very nicely.)

Come to think of it, this is actually not true. At work, I have to use Flash Player for exactly one thing: Adobe Connect. I wonder why they didn't move to Flash yet. ;)

Not sure if this is the case for adobe connect, but other, similar products (such as blackboard's collaborate) are trying to move across to webRTC. This is complicated because Apple doesn't support webRTC yet, which I'd imagine is why Adobe hasn't moved across just yet.