"Adobe Systems has said that it plans to phase out its Flash Player plug-in by the end of 2020."

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40716304

"...and nothing of value was lost."

Exactly, it was crap since day 1. It coincides with the EOL of Win7, so maybe finally I can transition my parents off of Windows then; since flash was the sole reason why I had to keep them on Windows. Sure Adobe finally updated flash to 26 in Linux, but sites would still not work right, because of a driver issue with NVIDIA. I only wish it was sooner than later; but I am sure that if it weren't for efforts by Apple, and Google to try to push flash away Adobe might have still clung to flash, hell even the developers at Facebook let their true feelings known. Only nice thing I can say, is that it had a good run, much too long, now it is time to make way for HTML5.

Why wait until 2020? They should just get rid of it now.

Problem is there are sites that are solely using flash - not just entertainment sites, but educational apparently.

Indeed. Also commercial sites. This way notice is given and businesses can make plans to port over to HTML5 etc. A much more sensible way of doing things rather than cutting support with no forewarning.

I know this would seem like a "no duh" - but I do hope that Adobe will just continue to patch security holes until EOL; discontinuing is one thing, but now Adobe should concentrate fully on just keeping flash secured until EOL.