On 10/06/07, Peter Alcibiades <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This attitude worries me more than anything that has come out of the Rev community since I started with Rev. People really do not seem to understand what the nature of the open source competition is. Its baffling, this degree of ignorance, and its deeply worrying.
Peter - I agree with you entirely, and it is well argued. I guess worrying doesn't help though :). It is justified and reasonable the objections people have. Many people have a very poor experience with open source software - particularly on the end user side, but also with company and professional use. I disagree with them but only time will tell. Many people when they first saw the internet had the same impression - ie what a mess. Many people when they first saw WikiPedia had the same impression. Many people still do with both. The competition that will destroy your product is the competition whose
existence you spend your whole time denying and refusing to look at.
I have worried the same. You watch open source projects grow and you see the gap between what Rev can do and what you can do with the open source code narrow steadily over time. Twice now I have stopped using Revolution because of these worries. More worrying is my experience of working with young freelance software developers. Over the last 5 years I have worked over extended periods with maybe 30 or 40 developers - enough time to show them in depth what Metacard / Revolution can do. I was usually the project lead so I could push the project in that direction (casually I have introduced many more people through lectures and conferences). The initial reaction was "great!" - but in the end not a single one of them took up the language. They learned python, ruby or some specific open source framework. I talked to them and I know why, and I know what sort of things could have swung it for them (no need to go as far as open sourcing the engine for instance!). 30 or 40 sales is nothing for RunRev - the real issue is these were very good and very bright developers, and that because of their energy would have produce open libraries for the rest of us (many of them have gone on to do this for their chosen languages). But please lets keep this positive! As people have pointed out there is nothing to stop it happening. If it is done well and people find it useful it will grow, waiting for RunRev or consensus, or consent is the death of a project like this. When it comes down to it - its all talk and politics unless we see the code. I for one feel like stopping this thread about open source. I am sure many others do to. Personally, I feel it would be better to speak through action. I feel bad about not having published stuff to this community in the past, and was righty critised by Chipp and others, so I'll take the committed step of actually publishing it. The web site has been up since a few months, and the services are all in place to integrate everything into the whichever IDE you use - all the code will be mirrored to a common SourceForge repository. If anyone wants to help out, or submit a library, or just take a peek - contact me off list. _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution