The reality is that Railo and Open BlueDragon are not growing the market for CFML. No one is *switching to* CFML from PHP, .NET, Ruby, or Java because of the OSS engines. To the extent that this might happen, it is an infinitesimally small number of projects. If any of the OSS engines have data to contradict that assertion, I'd love to see it.
The OSS engines, particularly Railo, were initially touted as a gateway for people working on other platforms, which is why their partnership with JBoss created such hope and expectation. This has not happened. What *has* happened is that a small but noticeable number of existing ColdFusion users have moved to the OSS engines. As an Adobe Community Professional, I'm privy to more "internal" information and direct communication with the Adobe employees. The primary drain on the Adobe ColdFusion user base is people moving to one of the OSS CFML engines. Not people leaving for PHP or .NET. People do leave for other platforms, and new people do come in, but that just means that the total size of the CFML community as a whole is fairly static in size. And now that total pie is being divided between CF, Railo, and OBD. I personally like most of the individual people involved in the OSS projects. I've known many of them for years. So this is not personal at all. But if the biggest drain on the ColdFusion user base is coming from the OSS engines, then Adobe is absolutely right to treat them as their top competitors. To NOT do this would be foolish. If the OSS engines were actually pulling in droves of new users from other platforms, this whole dynamic would probably be much different. But that is simply not the case. Brian On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Larry Lyons <larrycly...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The point being FOSS complements and expands the market for CFML, and by > extension Adobe. If anything Adobe should be promoting the FOSS engines as a > low cost entry point. That is something it has been criticized about for > years. Once the customer realizes how much more is available with the Adobe > engine they will make that sale. Its a model that's been followed in quite a > few successful operations, such as Zend with PHP and RedHat with Linux and > JBoss. In both these cases having an open source entry point has not hurt > their bottom line. > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:341171 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
