Constellation

Dennis Brown see3d at writeme.com
Thu Oct 20 22:30:19 EDT 2005


Ben,

This is a good idea, and I am glad you have the time and energy to  
help make it happen.  One of the things I like about the Rev  
community is that the spirit of sharing is alive.

However, I don't begrudge any developer, who has taken on the task of  
producing a significant tool for development, a modest fee for  
sharing it.  It takes a lot of work (and time away from paying  
customers) to turn a personal tool into a product --and to support  
it.  If every developer made a modest tool and shared it for a modest  
fee, then it would be a break even proposition --the fees received  
from other developers = the fees payed for other developers tools.

  I believe that the tools offered for sale in this community do not  
actually pay back for the time and effort in their development.  The  
fee charged just insures that those who buy it, need it, and it pays  
for their support.  I believe it is mostly a labor of love and  
sharing, but a developer needs an incentive to rationalize the time  
spent on a "product" with no initial paying customer.  There is also  
a promotion of reputation in the process that is good for getting  
future contract work.

Sharing openly a tool in a less than productized state, might work  
out to be the same cost --the debug and maintenance effort is  
somewhat shared.  I see a lot of this sharing here and it also helps  
others progress in the process.

However, a significant product effort like Rev or even Constellation  
requires a significant level of design, commitment, and support to  
make it into a reality.  People are working full time on upgrading,  
debugging, and supporting these.  Someone has to pay the bills.  If  
the tool results in labor saved in development, it pays for itself  
many times over.

I am happy to support those efforts, so my tools will continue to  
improve and be maintained.  If I pay RunRev for a better product, I  
am justified in yelling at them if they slack off on delivering.  If  
it were open source, I would have to beg for someone to donate the  
time to fix or improve anything.  Besides the community is not big  
enough to support an open project of this magnitude.

People who don't earn any revenue from their programming (like me)  
would of course like to take advantage of the lowest cost tools.  I  
have to weigh the cost of my time (free, but not really) with the  
cost of a tool.  I believe RunRev has addressed this appropriately  
with DreamCard (Revolution for the rest of us), and the various  
levels of Revolution.  I know that if I can't really solve my problem  
without a tool, I can find something at a reasonable price here.

The Rev community supports all these various models for tool  
development and I believe it is the richer for it.  I am most  
encouraged by the fact that the same developer is often involved in  
more than one kind of sharing their talents --pay product, free  
product, open source, free advice.

The developers on this list all ROCK!

Dennis

On Oct 20, 2005, at 8:43 PM, Ben Fisher wrote:

> Well, I guess Constellation beat me to it... I had also been  
> working on a
> similar script editing interface. It looks pretty nice though.
>  Just a few comments...
>  It seems like a lot of the plug-ins and tools for Revolution  
> lately are
> being sold. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact most of the  
> time these
> products look nicer and are easier to use.
>  However, I am always more attracted to free open-source projects,  
> not just
> because of the price, but also because of the spirit. Developers  
> helping
> each other, one of the reasons I subscribe to this list. If I download
> open-source code, I can contribute to the project. All fellow  
> developers can
> profit from my contributions, and not just the few who can afford  
> to buy.
> Perhaps Revolution is partly at fault: that stacks (not being text  
> files)
> are not as easy to be developed by a team. Or maybe I just belong to a
> different generation of coders?
>  After thriving off of free software for so long, it felt kind of  
> awkward
> for me to spend the money to even upgrade my version of Revolution.  
> Paying
> money just to get the language? I'm sure many other potential Rev  
> developers
> are discouraged by the same type of feelings.
>  I propose that a central website be created, full of code from the  
> Rev
> universe. More structured than a wiki, files would be uploaded into
> categories and directories, but the whole database could be quickly
> searched. Most importantly, there would be a section composed of  
> tools and
> utilities all completely free and open source. I know websites like  
> this
> already exist, but it would be so much cooler if there were one
> authoritative Rev Source.
>  -Ben Fisher
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