Good questions. See answers inserted below. Vince Bonfanti New Atlanta Communications, LLC http://www.newatlanta.com
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 12:36 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [CFCDev] OT: BD / CF > > > Vince, > > It is clear you've built a viable product, but I have some > pretty big concerns about BD as a long-term CF'er. > > First of all, CF has survived on the strength and viability > of the company that has developed it - Allaire now > Macromedia. How does diluting MM's income stream (and > thereby potentially threatening its viability) help the > language? vgb: It's not our goal to dilute MM's income stream, nor has that been the effect of BlueDragon. On the contrary, in the long term, the success of BlueDragon should help increase MM's income for ColdFusion. To my first point: I'm not aware of any BlueDragon customer who did a side-by-side comparison of CFMX and BlueDragon and then chose BD. Instead, here's what has generally happened: a company with an existing CF5 (or CF4.5) application begin an investigation of upgrading to CFMX and decides they're not going to upgrade (there are many different reasons for this). This decision is made before they ever heard of BlueDragon. Having decided they're not going to upgrade to CFMX, they begin casting about for alternatives, usually first looking to rewrite their CFML in JSP or ASP.NET. In the process, they discover BlueDragon; some do an analysis of BD and buy it, some decide to go ahead and rewrite in JSP or ASP.NET anyway. The point is: BD didn't take away any business from MM. Instead, we picked up business that MM had already lost. Which brings me to my second point, which I alluded to in an earlier email: those customers who decided to redeploy on BD instead of rewriting in JSP or ASP.NET have remained in the CFML community, and remain potential customers for future product from MM, if MM can deliver a product that meets their needs better than BD. Had those customers abandoned CFML altogether, MM would have lost them as potential customers forever. As BlueDragon becomes more mature, and more well-known, and more widely deployed, it will tend to increase the size of the CFML market. A growing CFML market is good for MM. > > Secondly, how does developing different versions of CF from > different vendors help the language? Lack of standardization > can be a huge downside for the marketing of a product. vgb: I agree with you on this one. I would like to see some sort of standards body define what the CFML language is. Whether such a standards body ever exists is pretty much up to MM. Having said that, the goal of BD will be to always be compatible with the most recent version of MM's ColdFusion. Any enhancements we do will be exactly that: enhancements that are in addition to the "core" language. These will always be clearly labeled as such in our documentation (so that no one is "tricked" into using our extensions), and you'll always be free not to use them. If MM ever introduces CFIMAP, CFIMAGE, or CFCONSTUCTOR tags, you can thank BlueDragon, since that's where they were implemented first. > > Thirdly, aren't you trading on the good name and reputation > of CF? The good name and reputation that was created by the > efforts and dollars Allaire/Macromedia (and represents a > substantial asset). Are you in any way compensating MM for > this? Do you think you should? > > It isn't as though CF was ever promoted as an open-source > solution - I would think it is the intellectual property of > MM? If so, how is it legal to "add features" to core CF? > Doesn't this get borderline into Sun Vs. MS type stuff? vgb: Regarding your analogy to Sun vs Microsoft: anyone is free to implement the Java programming language and Sun has no rights to make them stop. In fact, Microsoft has a version of "Java" that compiles and runs on .NET, which they call J#. The only thing they can't do is call it "Java" because Sun owns that word as a trademark when applied to a programming language. The only thing Sun sued (and won) Microsoft for was their use of the word "Java". There have also been efforts by the open source community to do "clean room" implementations of Java that don't use any Sun code, and "clean room" implementations of some of the Java security APIs. These are all perfectly legal. Sun does not own the Java programming language, only the name "Java". Similarly, MM does not own the CFML programming language. Anyone is free to implement it. MM owns the trademark "ColdFusion" (but not "CFML") and the copyrights to their implementations of CFML (that is, the source code to CF5 and CFMX). None of MM's trademark rights or copyrights are being violated by New Atlanta. > > You can of course say that competition is a good thing and it > is - but there is already tons of competition in the > application server space. I have doubts as to whether > diluting efforts within the scope of this application server > technology benefits us as a developer community (whose > livelihood substantially depends currently on the viability > of MM and its marketing clout). Maybe its all good, but I > really need to be convinced of this. vgb: Competition is a good thing. We're not diluting MM's efforts but expanding upon them. If you personally never use BlueDragon you're going to benefit by it in two ways: (1) we're going to introduce new features that MM is going to pick up and implement in CF, either from customer demand or simply because they're good ideas; and, (2) to the extent that we help expand and grow the CFML market and community, you're going to benefit as a member of that community. ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' in the message of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by Mindtool, Corporation (www.mindtool.com). An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
