Revolution and the Web, feedback wanted, Part 1 of 3

[Brian Yennie]

> That could be, but as the discussion you pointed out mentioned, GWT
> didn't come out until six months after the Google guys were at
> Morfik's demo at the Web 2.0 conference last year.  I believe that is
> admissible as evidence at trial if Morfik is indeed granted the patent
> they applied for.

Yeah - who knows. I'm not partial to either side, but of course it  
all depends on whether Morfik actually tries to use a patent against  
Google.

> As a person who has owned several, that's exactly what I'm saying.
> The fact that both play music, and both have either flash or mini hard
> drives does not make them similar.  The market seems to agree.

I love an iPod as much as the next guy (and have owned two), but they  
are still similar products to other MP3 players. Sure I agree they  
are better, but yes - two products with the same hardware, same  
features, and competing for the same customer are as similar as it  
gets. How much similar can you be? But we digress...

> Are you in the Pioneers program?  If you were then you would already
> have access to all of this.  By the way, I didn't mean to spring this
> on anyone, but I checked earlier this evening on the cross-platform
> issues, so a) Safari is listed as a bug, and is in the to-do list b)
> OSX binary is listed as a bug and is in the to-do list, and the Linux
> compatibility issue listed as "lab test", whatever that means.  I
> can't tell you more since I'm not on the inside.

No, because I don't want to join the pioneer's program in order to  
decide whether I'm interested in the product. They should really put  
up some more documentation on their website for all to see, IMO. This  
is probably mute for a lot of people because they have a free trial  
of the software, but it's Windows-only so I'm out of luck.

I also found this nugget:

"Employees and affiliates of Morfik Technology's competitors are not  
eligible to access information or obtain materials pertaining to  
Morfik's WebOS AppsBuilder software, its testing, or applying for its  
testing, and disclosing and/or using such information in any way that  
compromises the confidentiality of Morfik's publicly announced  
information or compromises Morfik's competitive position. Violations  
of these conditions will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible  
under the law."

Yikes. Sounds like if I joined the program and then wrote a  
Revolution-based AJAX / RAD add-on, there is a good chance Morfik  
would take me to court. No way I'm going to agree to a non-compete in  
order to join their pioneer program. Guess I have to pay $5k after  
all =).

> I agree that the vocabulary is difficult.  Both they and Google throw
> around the word "Compiler" in a way that is completely unfamiliar to
> me, and I've written a couple (for example).

Yep. I know Morfik isn't any worse than anyone else with the buzz  
words, I just universally hate them =).

> Bringing all of this back to the original discussion, I would really
> like to see RR establish some sort of AJAX functionality, and not with
> a bunch of strap-on external puppies either.  However I'm afraid that
> will be a couple of years down the road first.

I would too. I actually think it's a quite doable project. Not small,  
but doable. It doesn't hurt that we could live on top of the existing  
Rev IDE and object properties.

So I guess we probably aren't going to agree on a lot of the Morfik  
points, but that's ok. Unfortunately if I work on a Revolution  
solution, it looks like we could end up in court if you help =P...

- Brian