David,
Thank you for this clear and informative email. As a current user of
IDE4Laszlo, I am disappointed that you have been unable to find the
resources to continue development of this tool.
In the lengthy and wandering "Legals not looking too good w/ existing
apps" thread at http://forum.openlaszlo.org/showthread.php?t=7654 there
was some discussion about openness and transparency. You said:
"If you subscribe to laszlo-dev, you can see all of the machinations
behind each and every change, big and small. You can also download
unqualified nightly builds. Communication and transparency on this list
have been complete"
I took a little issue with this statement, but didn't feel like pursuing
it in that context.
I feel your announcement today of the end of support of IDE4Laszlo is a
good example of my feeling of lack of transparency. As recently as
Friday there were messages on laszlo-dev relating to getting Eclipse
working with OL4. This would lead me to believe that the plan was to
update IDE4Laszlo to support OL4. Today I find that it is being
dropped. Yes we have insight and transparency into what the developers
are doing day to day - the micro details. What we don't have clear
communication and transparency on is what you and the other manager of
Laszlo Systems are doing and thinking.
There was no discussion on the list of dropping IDE4Laszlo. Although
there were many indications that Laszlo Systems was not 100% behind
IDE4Laszlo, there were plenty of other indications that you wanted to
have an IDE and had nothing better than IDE4Laszlo. Based on the
available information, I felt that it was relatively unlikely that you
would drop IDE4Laszlo, and I actually thought that once OL4 was done,
you might actually put some resources behind it and bring it up to par.
Yes the actual code that makes up Open Laszlo is "open source", but the
planning and project management is still very much proprietary and
closed source. As a whole, despite the terrific access to the code and
the developers, the project still has the feel of working with a closed
source vendor, where we can never be sure what they will do next.
I realize that this is how it may have to be - after all Laszlo Systems
is a for profit company with a lot of venture capital investment and
some very big competitors. I also realize that I am not one to talk, as
I have yet to convince my own company of the value of collaborating and
contributing to the improvement of the platform, but you asked for "
Any/all feedback/comments much appreciated."
I'm not saying I don't love working with OpenLaszlo, I'm just saying
that if you wanted to make it better for me and other developers like
me, you would use laszlo announce to announce the bad as well as the
good - when dates slip, when features get cut from projects, and when
whole projects are killed. And you wouldn't just announce them as done
deals, you would announce that you are considering this path and ask for
input. When you are looking at making significant trade offs - do we do
x, y, or both and push the date; instead of just making the choice, why
not post to the list, ask for feedback, and let the users make their
cases. I realize that there aren't that many developers who are
regularly active on these lists, but even throwing the issue out there
is helpful for those of us who usually just read it. And you don't have
to give up control - this isn't a democracy as my boss likes to say.
But you can at least let us give you our reasons for wanting x over y,
or for wanting the thing done sooner, even if it has neither x nor y.
I hope you find this feedback helpful.
David Temkin wrote:
Mark,
IDE4Laszlo is no longer being actively developed. In December, the
Eclipse management committee voted to "archive" the project because of
a lack of development activity. While it may be resuscitated in the
future, the current state of affairs is that IDE4Laszlo is not an
active Eclipse Foundation project and cannot be downloaded from
eclipse.org.
The OpenLaszlo team is 100% focused on OpenLaszlo 4 now, and doesn't
have the cycles to update the IDE4Laszlo to match OL4, or to address
the various issues with IDE4Laszlo installation and performance. The
IBM engineers who wrote the original code are also otherwise occupied
now, and the project has not garnered enough outside interest to move
it forward in a meaningful way.
In the meantime, we will make a snapshot (source and binary) of
IDE4Laszlo available from OpenLaszlo.org, but it is not supported, is
not compatible with OL4, and its future is not guaranteed.
However, one thing is certain, and that is that some developers would
value an OpenLaszlo-focused IDE. You can get a lot done with an
XML-capable IDE or editor right now, but we definitely understand that
there are advantages to an IDE that is OL-centric, and that those
advantages are critical to some developers.
Toward that end, Laszlo Systems has been investigating various options
to restart this project or to initiate an effort to create a different
type of IDE altogether. The Laszlo team would welcome anyone
interested in discussing a partnership (open source or commercial)
around an OpenLaszlo IDE. We know that there have been several
separate efforts to build IDEs that support OL; our interest is in a
product-grade IDE that may or may not be an open source project.
Of course, given that IDE4Laszlo is open source, and licensed under
the Eclipse Public License, there is nothing to stop anyone from
nothing to stop anyone from enhancing the code and making it into an
active project, with or without the support of the Eclipse Foundation,
Laszlo Systems, or IBM.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and do hope to have better
news sometime after OL4 is released. In the meantime, I would
personally welcome any ideas or proposals from developers on this list
that would get the community closer to a production-grade,
OpenLaszlo-focused IDE.
best,
David Temkin
Founder and CTO
Laszlo Systems
On Jan 21, 2007, at 5:39 AM, Patton, Mark J wrote:
Hello All,
I have been trying to locate and download the ide4laszlo eclipse
plugin and have had no luck.
Can anyone tell me where I might find it?
Thanks,
Mark.
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