Ground Control to Revolution

[Richmond Mathewson]

Before this Open Source versus Commercial 'spat' goes
any further let me make a few points:

1. Scott Kane has demonstrated his unshakeable
conviction many times that Open Source is a waste of
time.

Scott is perfectly entitled to hold that point of
view; although, personally, I think he is wrong.

2. Metacard is "sort of" Open Source, insofar as the
IDE goes - it still depends on the RR engine. 

3. The Documentation: Yup, we all know it isn't very
good.

4. Runtime Revolution are a commercial company, and
(at least as far as I know) the people who work for RR
depend on income generated by the RAD to put food in
their fridges.

5. I would have thought one way to go was as follows:

A consortium of programmers should be assembled who
feel that they can donate (!!!) some of their time,
energy and effort towards working to improve aspects
of RR they feel grumpy about. They then do the work
required and donate the end result to RR.

6. Another way (!!!!) would be to assemble the
consortium who build a clone of RR starting with an
Open Source engine.

7. Scott Kane and his 'camp' and the Open Source
'camp' are both entrenched - so it is probably better
not to clog up the use-list in circular arguments
which eventually digenerate into unpleasantness.

Now, somebody who really felt strongly about the O.
Source route could start up some sort of use-list,
Yahoo-list, something where this debate could
continue.

8. Of course I now have to shove in my opinion:-

Runtime Revolution is a bloody good RAD. So the RR
developers should stop the treadmill of endless
upgrades and concentrate on sorting out all the loose
ends that are making a lot of people cheesed-off. 

2.8.2, or 2.9 or what-ever should be dumped right now.

2.8.1 should be refined:

no new eye-candy, no new features: get the
Documentation up to scratch, the Linux version lined
up with the Win and the Mac versions. Fix all the
bugs!!!

And let us have a version 3 (Hey, that's funny, Apple
choked on HC version 3) that is what everybody wants.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson

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A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle.
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