> > PHP is free because it doesn't come from a company, and
> > there are no employees and stockholders to satisfy.
>
> That is of no importance to developers and application
> hosters. Linux is fundamentally free, but is now offered
> pre-installed by the likes of Dell, Compaq and IBM such is
> its importance.
It may be of no importance to application hosters (if by that you mean
essentially ISPs who will host whatever they can host as cheaply as
possible), but I'd argue that developers, and people using applications, may
care very much about who to call when they have trouble.
More to the point, if you're concerned about the future of CF, you probably
think that CF is a better product than PHP. Why is that? What makes it a
better product? Could it be, perhaps, that there are people out there whose
job it is to improve that product faster than other products get improved?
On the enterprise side of things, is anyone using PHP for enterprise-wide
applications? If not, why not?
> With respect - you misunderstand what I am saying here.
>
> I am not suggesting they cease to develop or support CF at
> all - on the contrary - what I am saying is that they should
> re-position it away from a profit center to a marketing center.
> In other words - they should concentrate on getting CF as widely
> deployed as possible, so that they can use their inside knowledge
> of the product, and their other expertise, to sell developers the
> ultimate CF development and productivity tools at a premium price
> - it is all down to positioning.
No disrespect intended, but I think I understand perfectly what you're
saying. However, I disagree. It is not all down to positioning. It is all
down to making a return on investment. Your suggestion smacks of the general
irrationality of the New Economy market. I think otherwise. If the product
is worth using, it's worth selling. If it can't survive as a salable
product, it's not worth using as a shill to get us to buy other things.
Companies like Microsoft can do that and survive - companies like Netscape
(from your previous example) can't.
> Or to put it another way - if CF was free and offered as a
> standard hosting option by_every_hosting service provider,
> there might be hundred of times more developers for it as a
> result, and if UltraDev was the definitive development
> environment they could sell hundreds of times more copies of
> UltraDev as a direct result - it is called creating a market
> or creating market demand. It certainly does not diminish the
> value of CF or those people working on it.
Given that UltraDev can generate CF, ASP and JSP code, why should MM care
then?
It seems that there's likely to be a relatively inelastic demand for web
development in the future, now that the "fad" part is over. There are only
so many editors that can be sold. Since MM's design tools already cater to
multiple platforms (and in fact have generally been popular for those other
platforms), why shouldn't CF stand on its own weight?
Finally, I'd be curious what percentage of web (internet/intranet)
development money comes from ISP shared-server application development and
hosting. My guess is that it's pretty small, but that's just my uneducated
guess.
Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
voice: (202) 797-5496
fax: (202) 797-5444
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