Dave, your right it doesn't seem to have made much difference yet, but as I have said many times before is the fact that the cf community does not cover the entire cf user base. There are a huge number of developers and users out there who do not participate in the community. Customers with CF driven websites on shared hosting etc, most of these people do not even know when a new version of CF comes out, let alone that there is an open source alternative. Even many within the community still don't know of the OSS alternatives. So just as you cannot build a website and they will come, you also can't just release an OSS cfml engine and expect everyone to know about it. Until CFML makes it into the main stream web media and is given some decent coverage then I don't really see how things can change. Currently CF gets nothing more than the odd mention/article. I recently had a letter published in a major net mag (unknown to me) which asked the editor "why does CF rarely get mentioned" and drew attention to the OSS alternatives and that you could use both for free on www.cfmldeveloper.com. Even this minor coverage resulted in a small surge of visits to www.cfmldeveloper.com, so I think that in itself shows that there is still interest and potential new users out there.
I think the difficulties in getting Railo installed and working has been a big block for many, and the team did rather assume that being a developer meant you know about running a server, which is just not true as the average developer only knows how to code not run a server or maintain an OS, and thankfully has been addressed now with a new installer. Look at any PHP forum and you will see plenty of PHP developers who struggle to get PHP working properly or getting php apps to work locally, what you can also see is that many of these developers simply develop directly on their hosts servers and don't worry about those issues. This has always been a plus for CF, while the whole Java/Servlets container/CF setup is actually very complex, Adobe's click, install, go has always made it easy, but this still causes issues for many as they still need to get a web server, mail server and db server running as well which comes with its own challenges. There has always been a plethora of free/cheap php hosts out there to accommodate the php developers which has no doubt helped tremendously, and cfmldeveloper.com tries to do the same for cf developers, but I suspect very few people know about it outside the community, and those are the people you do want to know about resources that will help them with CFML, but how to get the word out is the problem. On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 4:38 AM, Dave Watts <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Why do you think it's absurd to think that open source engines will > > bring more people? > > Because it doesn't seem to have done so, so far. Because the niche in > which CF is popular doesn't seem to care that much about open source > or free. Because there are plenty of other open source engines in > other languages, and people who care a lot about that seem to have > mostly already moved to one of those. > > > Do you think the only thing that makes a language "worth" something, > > is how much it costs? > > No. I'm not sure where you got that from my previous responses. > > > What about my argument about one in the bush, vs. none in the bush? > > That's not an argument, it's speculation. > > > And say Adobe did drop CF-- do you think that would spell the end of > > the language? > > Yeah, I do. I don't think that everyone would switch to comparatively > unknown, new alternatives. If a big company like Adobe can't guarantee > the future of CF, why would anyone think that these other people can? > > Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software > http://www.figleaf.com/ > http://training.figleaf.com/ > > Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on > GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized > instruction at our training centers, online, or onsite. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| 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:341785 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
