On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Phil Waight wrote: > 1. The big limitation of MapX (or its environment), was that even after > 10 years+? of its existance, the availability of public free or > commercial code/libraries for doing simple and complex things is > non-existant. ... not sure why nothing happened in this regard??
That's a really good question. I think one reason is that it costs a lot more to get into the MapX game. If you have to spend $5000 to get the SDK and the initial 40 licenses, you tend to have a particular commercial app in mind, and sharing free code doesn't usually fit into that effort. Another possibility is that the forum culture where people come together doesn't foster a sense of user self-help. The MapInfo managed forums are good and responsive, but it's almost always clients with questions answered by MapInfo employees. I seldom see users helping users there. And finally, I think the MapX forum community is quite a bit smaller than MapInfo-L, and maybe it's never gotten the spark to fire an altruistic movement. > What is going to prevent the MapX code graveyard happening with .NET? I think the population that gets into this is going to be a lot bigger (unless MapInfo prices their components and libraries so ridiculously that only employees of large corporations can get their hands on then) and more independent developers will be using VB.NET and C# anyway in the future. It's the independents who tend to build communities because they can, and it's obvious how it helps them. Giving away selected useful tools is also a guerrilla marketing technique for small developers. You get a rep as a competent developer and when people need to hire a contractor, you're easier to find. > If my understanding is correct, even with MI .NET and a lot of > specialised .NET EXEs, the problem you have is the shared map or layout. Maybe we just need to build a monitor module with a public API that applications that want to be open to third party enhancements would register themselves with it, and all other third party tools could snap themselves into it. But I don't know enough about what's possible yet; I'm still learning. > 3. Who is going to convert the many useful MapBasic apps to .NET? Who is > going to define the interface to make them widely usable? Ah, you're volunteering then? > 5. What are the licensing implications of someone say, writing and > selling NorthPoint.dll which provides a function call to accept a map > object and add a feature object to that map. Does the DLL author need to > pay licencing fees, or does the calling app licence cover this. (There > are no fees distributing a .MBX). I think the onus of paying license fees lies with whoever deploys a working application to end users. If you write something that requires a MapInfo dll in the environment, then it's not your problem to worry about that. If a developer uses your tool, then they pay you whatever you need for your bit, and they pay MapInfo for their bits, and they get their revenue from their end users. It's kind of like how we buy or use ActiveX components now. Some require money to be distributed, and others are free. - Bill Thoen --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 14593
