It's unfortunate that Scratch is built upon the Flash platform. Though Scratch h...

sdg1 · on May 13, 2014

We have a work-in-progress HTML5 version as well: https://github.com/LLK/scratch-html5

davexunit · on May 13, 2014

Well that is great news! Thanks for letting me know.

mcherm · on May 13, 2014

Really? That's very exciting!

rch · on May 13, 2014

Google's Blockly is similar and available under the Apache License:

"Blockly is a component that may be useful for a variety of projects, including educational tools. We want developers to be able to play with Blockly, give feedback, and think of novel uses for it. All the code is free and open source."

https://code.google.com/p/blockly/source/browse/trunk/COPYIN...

nullz · on May 13, 2014

I've worked on a project that used Blockly and found it to be great : )

tarr11 · on May 13, 2014

I think it's more important for kids to learn to code, that it is to be consistent about using non-free software.

Scratch is free, committed to open source, and is frankly the best software out there for getting young kids excited about coding.

I'd highly recommend it, despite being encumbered by flash.

rasur · on May 13, 2014

The Scratch I knew from a while ago was built on Smalltalk, and in fact there's an updated version that runs on Pharo Smalltalk, called 'Phratch'.

I have not compared the two, but if you want a freer version, I would recommend looking at http://www.phratch.com/