Open Source (was Don't you just wish Rev would do this?)

[Trevor DeVore]

On Jun 7, 2007, at 12:49 PM, David Bovill wrote:

> Its easy to say that RunRev is not Adobe, but I would be
> interested in your thinking as to why RunRev could not make as good a
> business out of open sourcing core parts of the C++ engine in a  
> similar way
> to 37Signals or MySQL in its early days.

Just to clarify, Ruby on Rails (I assume that is what you are  
referring to when you mention 37Signals) is a framework built for an  
already existing development language.

Someone could make an open source web application framework in  
Revolution and would be doing the same thing as 37Signals in this  
regard, though the underlying language would not be open source.  
Revolution could even be the folks to do that if they wanted. It  
appears to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that this would be similar to  
the Adobe solution. Adobe did not open source Flex Builder, Flex Data  
Services or Flash itself - just the Flex framework. At least that is  
what I've read in articles discussing the topic.

But personally I don't think the Revolution language is mature enough  
yet to venture down this road. The language is not extensible so the  
beauty of the Revolution syntax breaks the moment you write  
functionality not included in the engine.

I think the first step is an extensible language designed by a small  
group that does have to waste time doing design by committee. Make  
that available to everyone and then people can start building elegant  
open source frameworks that will catch on.

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Learning Systems
www.bluemangolearning.com    -    www.screensteps.com
trevor at bluemangolearning.com