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New Atlanta's Blue Dragon J2EE version (an option to Adobe ColdFusion) becoming open source
It take me some time to write about it as I wanted to read almost everything people wrote before. At the end of this article you'll find a lot of links to blogs and websites that I read before writing this.
First a note I took at the first sight of this news: it's very good for the CFML as a language and for the ColdFusion market overall. It can help developers to first learn CF, use it on their projects and renew the market around Adobe's (and New Atlanta's, see below) product.
Although I think it's good, I don't think the OS world will embrace CFML on the long run. They already have PHP and other options like Ruby so why? 'Cause CFML is so easy to program with? A lot of open source programmers I know thinks it is a problem, not an advantage.
But the situation may change a lot if - and only if - New Atlanta and Adobe put some effort on the OS option. Why Adobe, you may ask. Having an OS version to kick start with CFML is great for Adobe, specially if they don't have to OS ColdFusion (their own product) to achieve this.
They can sell a better and increased version, they can make the BDOS compatible with their own product, making sure that people who start with BDOS can "upgrade" to Adobe ColdFusion without a lot of work.
But, as people noted around the "blogosphere", the CFEclipse plugin didn't catch with the "ColdFusion OS community". Smith, another OS option to Adobe ColdFusion, didn't had a lot of developers jumping in and probably New Atlanta's BD will have not either. One can argue that it's about the lack of features - how can you expect people to contribute within something buggy and featureless? But that's not the excuse for CFEclipse, who is a great plugin. Adobe - and Macromedia, before - wasn't known for their efforts to help the community spread the word - even knowing that developers are always busy and active doing it for them.
The license adopted will be GPL - the same way MySQL does. If you want to distribute your software with BlueDragon, it'll have to be open source by GPL too. The .Net version will not be open sourced, only the J2EE - and for companies or individuals who doesn't can/want to share, there'll be another commercial license.
The announcement was made but the "real product" isn't there for people to mess with now - it'll be in June 2008. Now the links and comments on then:
New Atlanta's annoucement
www.dcooper.org
Damon Cooper makes a harsh comment on New Atlanta's announcement, claiming it is a "defeat" for Blue Dragon. As a lot of commenters on the topic, I don't plainly agree with him...
Interview with Vince Bonfanti
Mr. Bonfanti is president and co-founder of New Atlanta. In this excellent interview to Dan Wilson at ColdFusion Zone he speaks about the ways New Atlanta will be serving the OS version of Blue Dragon, the licensing and other interesting details. Worth the reading!
How to get involved with the Open Source version of BlueDragon
An Architect's View
Sean Corfield wisely makes a cautious comment on the announcement and I share his opinion: the future lies on the open source folk's acceptance of this new language.
ColdFusion Jedi
Raymond Camden's adds to the discussion but the real treasure is on the comments. Brian Swartzfager's and Gary F's comments about the hosting companies picking BD over Adobe ColdFusion (or allowing users to install it) could really change the face of CFML market over time. Great discussion!
Fusion Authority
Charlie Griefer takes another shot on the announcement and here I find someone who believes Adobe could weight in by open sourcing their Standard version of ColdFusion. I don't believe they'll go so far, but it would be an interesting move. Some CFML Standards Committee with Adobe and New Atlanta, and Railo and Smith joining on BDOS would be really amazing... and really change the CFML market around the globe.
Simon Whatley
This is a blogger that I learned to watch closely as he is a great article writer, but on this he only posted a quick note and pointed to...
Aarrgghh!!
By Terrence Ryan. After an opinion that I agree on - that the community will not see any "gains" with this, specially "right now", he aims at the "sides" opinion, believing that there would be two market views - the "free" vs "paid" solutions, betting Adobe will win with the paid one. I don't know if he is wrong, but I believe on the kick start with the OS/free solution then upgrading to a paid solution. It happens a lot with PHP? No. But it happens with MySQL and New Atlanta is acting like it so they can be successful. Let's see.
CFGigolô (in Portuguese)
The announce even make it on Brazilian blogging community, with Alex Hubner posting a single note telling how he thinks this is an important move for CFML community, specially here in Brazil where - it's true - it's not common to pay for a web language solution.
And that's it. Obviously we'll have to watch it over time to see what really happens, but the announce really caused a lot of fuss inside the community - don't know if outside too - and it has potential to change things. I'll be using BDOS when it becomes available and posting notes here.
Labels: adobe, bluedragon, cfml, coldfusion, hosting, opensource
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As I create my studies map, marking links and technologies to know, practice and get some knowledge, I think about what should I do? What should I create as I study this APIs, languages, etc?
And every now and then one thing comes to my mind: contact management. Today it's so hard to maintain accurate and up-to-date information on your contacts that I sense a real lack of an easy-to-use, complete and extensible application.
This is only me? There's someone out there that feel the same?
My first appointments to the final application, the "app should enable":
1. data grabbing from social networks (as many as possible);
2. control over data modified on these social networks and enable the user to decide if the update should or not be applied;
3. a history of applied updates, easily accessible at contact profile;
4. import and export data in various formats, including to cellphones, smartphones, Palms and the likes;
5. desktop offline option, using AIR, GoogleGears, SilverLight, anything.
Well, someone to weight in with ideas or is this kind of application dead on its conception? There's something out there that really does this?
Labels: internet business, opensource, simplicity, usability, user-centric
Leave a comment | Links to this text |Great news! ColdFusion open source engine to be released
From: www.cfgigolo.com
If really released it'll be great: Smith, a "freeware, cross-platform ColdFusion engine" announced they can make their product open source. It's a clever move, specially because Adobe apparently will not create a "free version" for their CFML engine - I'm not forgetting others, specially New Atlanta's Blue Dragon, but at this moment I'll focus on Smith.
ColdFusion, besides its price, is growing in market share and public attention. Adobe acquisition was great for the product; Flex is delivering ColdFusion solutions and examples, bringing CF to a broad and mixed audience.
As I see the market now, ColdFusion still gets no respect from "real programmers" but is getting into designers hands and we all know design is key for internet software today (and tomorrow). Let's hope Smith really releases its product in open source license to see what market impact it'll reach. I'm thinking about giving Smith a try, but not at these busy days, when I can't barely open the Adobe Prerelease website...
Important to remember: ColdFusion is Adobe's registered trademark; Smith will release a CFML engine, not a "ColdFusion" something, although they use "ColdFusion" in their own site.
Labels: adobe, cfml, coldfusion, opensource, smith
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Charles Pilger (linked above) writes a great piece against the hope of some members of the (Brazilian?) Linux community that new MS Windows Vista will bring more users to Linux due to lack of hardware to run the hungry Operating System that Microsoft started shipping this days.
It's good to see a defendant of the open source community speaking clearly and focused about the challenges OS (specially Linux) community faces to win the "war" over Windows on desktops. He concludes the article saying something like "get games, get users". I somewhat agree with him.
He says that home users don't like to switch systems, to learn everything again and specially they don't like to lose all their apps they're used to. It's really an entry barrier for Linux to the desktops and one reason of the high levels of piracy in Brazilian "PC Para Todos" ("computers for everyone", in a lousy translation).
In order to get people moving to Linux, the OS community around them will have to guarantee users the same (or almost) of what they get in their Windows. And let not talk about the "my work computer" vs. "my home computer"... or why piracy at home is somehow tolerated while enterprise piracy is highly combated.
Labels: brasil, linux, opensource, pc para todos, piracy, windows
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