I love NHibernate. I like the flexibility and the power it gives me to design elegant object oriented systems. I have used NHibernate, LLBLGEN, Linq to Sql, and Entity Framework, and I still like NHibernate best. Perhaps I am biased because I am most familiar with NHibernate, but I feel like my exposure to alternatives is enough to make an informed decision.
I often feel very concerned about the future of NHibernate. How many "core" developers are there? I don't mean guys that contribute a patch now and then, but guys that are spending 10 or more hours a week (20 or more is better) on the development? I have even heard one of the core developers say that "Entity Framework is the future". Open source software is great, and I'm a big advocate, but it has its drawbacks. There are many great libraries, frameworks, applications, etc, that fall off the map, because there is no business model to support them, and the core developers eventually get bored, or go get jobs that pay the bills. There are plenty of successful open source projects, both with financial backing, and without. Two that stick out in particular (with financial backing) are 1. Firefox (Backed by Google, who gave them 88 million dollars last year) 2. Subversion (Backed by CollabNet) Of course there is also GIMP, which competes fairly well as a Photoshop alternative, and doesn't have corporate sponsorship (as far as I know), and is simply maintained by volunteers. However, I still feel concerned about NHibernate's future. Has any one ever thought of seeking corporate sponsorship? Many people come to this group, or other NH forums, asking if they should use NH or Entity Framework, and the response from this community is always the same: "Don't compare the two. It's not a fair comparison. Microsoft has a legion of full time developers, and we're just 4 guys". But, for someone making a technology decision for their project or their company, they don't CARE if the odds are in Microsoft's favor when it comes to time, money, and resources. They care about which product does what they want. They aren't going to bleed on their sleeve, and say "Oh but look, these NHibernate guys worked for free! They are the hero underdogs, let's use their product!!!". So, comparisons can and must be made. NHibernate is a tool for business, so businesses will make any comparisons they need to. Can we possibly hear from the core developers? What are you thoughts about seeking corporate sponsorship? If a strong, financially stable company offered to pay 4 full time salaries for core NHibernate developers, would you guys do it? Do you feel like you would somehow lose control over NHibernate's direction? Do you feel like it would create a mess of legal issues? It seems that many companies would have an interest in NHibernate. Sun now owns MySQL, and I'm sure plenty of NHibernate code is being written to access MySQL databases. Google is a strong supported of open source projects that are useful. Perhaps they are even using NH in a few places. Oracle seems to be interested in any product that isn't tied exclusively to MS SQL Server. What do the developers and the community think? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nhusers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nhusers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
