changes to the runrev store

[Peter Alcibiades]

Rev has always been fair to the point of generosity in my own experience, so
this is not a criticism.  Heather is always clear and helpful and friendly. 
And the language is very nice indeed.

The issue seems to be the trade off between open source and proprietary. 
When you go proprietary there are inevitable tradeoffs.  One is the one we
find here, that the terms and conditions and the product offering itself may
change, and there is not a lot you can do about it.  Again, I am not being
critical - they probably change for very good commercial reasons, but when
they do, you are relatively powerless.

Another tradeoff I've noticed lately is from the increasing number oif
proprietary plugins.  Again, not to be critical, some are very nice. 
However, they have to be closed systems to work commercially for their
authors, which has the unintended consequence of putting the burden of
keeping all these separate bits up to date on the buyer and user.

A key example for me occurred with the vanishing of Media.  Also the changes
to the arrangements for the Linux version.  Very understandable, but a real
loss.

If one's needs and expectations are closely enough allied with the supplier,
or if like Richmond and myself, you have no problem remaining on an aging
version of the software, it may not matter and the tradeoff may be worth
making.  However, you have to recognize the incentives that are intrinsic to
the situation.  The effect is to make Python look better all the time, if
you expect your needs to go beyond hobbyism.  

Its not as easy or intuitive.  Indentation is vile.  People are rude about
WX and I understand why. There is a proliferation of IDEs, editors, tools
which is both a blessing and a curse.  But its cross platform, huge amounts
of documentation from various authors, and in the case of us Linux users
'apt-get' and update it, and there you go.

The lesson for the proprietary supplier might be, this stuff is always out
there as a threat, the insurance of availability of source code and forks is
always there to keep the open source guys honest, so you need to be very,
very careful when making changes not to tilt the incentives too far in their
direction.

I just found myself picking a language to introduce a bright twelve year old
to.  Yes, these are the sorts of things that go through your mind.   A
discreet silence on the final choice!




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