Flash Player does not support error recovery when it comes to loading policy file.
If for some reason socket policy server does not respond on the first call of Security.loadPolicy(url) there is no way to recover from this situation. All subsequent call to Security.loadPolicy() will be in vain.
I’ve submitted this bug in January 2008 and after 2 FlashPlayer releases there is no sign of a progress on this issue. FP 10 beta does not show any signs of the addressed problem either.
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-67
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-14483
Adobe’s attitude is well described by Screenivas
Version 1.0 release : We are releasing a great product which would help our users in a great way by boosting their productivity. We would fix all serious bugs soon.
Customer: Great. Let me use it.
Version 2.0 release : We have lot of new features for you. In this release we have addressed all serious bugs (read it as bugs reported by great partners and volume customers) in the previous release.
Customer: But what about other serious bugs faced by me?
Company: We would fix all bugs soon.
Customer: They are only fixing bugs for the new features and few more bugs from volume customers.
Version 3.0 release : We have lot of new features. We have revelutionized the workflow. We have rewritten many parts of the code to boost performance. etc… Of-course now we are open-source !
Customer: Now it is Open-source ? Great! But what about bugs which were in 1.0 release?
Company: Oh! our customers have lived with these bugs for more than 2 years, now they have almost stopped complaining…..they can live with it! If they complain more, let us ask them to upgrade to the new version and follow a new workflow/API for the same feature which we have introduced. And anyway we are open-source let them grab the source and fix the bug themselves. We can’t spend our precious development time over fixing those old bugs.
Customer: Where I can find a developer and time to study this piece of open-source product and fix bugs for me? …?….?
There are 6385 unresolved or deferred bugs in the Flex bugs database. And they are now actively working on Flex4. This is so great! I could not wait for another version for Flex – this so exciting!