Ground Control to Revolution

[David Bovill]

On 10/06/07, Peter Alcibiades <palcibiades-first at yahoo.co.uk> 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.