On Apr 21, 2010, at 1:13 AM, Rick Schummer wrote:
>>> Since it's so typical, it raises the question of the wisdom of
>> continuing to invest in Microsoft solutions.<<
>
> No surprise you would come out with another broad stroke without any backing
> in the specific case.
Gee, and I was just agreeing with you, and using your words: "The
problem that Craig and Bo faced was the typical Microsoft nonsense of changing
targets. Like nailing jello to the wall."
Calling this "typical" is certainly a pretty broad stroke of your own,
and yes, it was consistent with my prior experience, too. But I really haven't
used Microsoft products in several years, and most of my knowledge of them
comes from this list. You, however, have far more experience with development
in the Microsoft world, and I was deferring to your judgment.
>>> You have to be solving a big enough pain point, and apparently, most VFP
>> devs are happy with the tools they already have.<<
>
> Or you get evolutionary on the product and prove to people there is
> something better. VFP Studio holds this promise. Most VFP developer who use
> something like the VS IDE know there is something better so I believe your
> assumption is flawed.
Not at all. I'm sure that every single product, whether it is
software-related or not, can be improved. And I'm sure that once you've tried
something that has features/ abilities/ comforts that the product you're using
doesn't, you start to wish that you could have those improvements, too.
So now you would like something new; you then have to make a mental
calculation as to what those improvements are worth to you. If it would improve
you current experience by more than it would cost you to obtain that, you do
it; otherwise, you add it to your wish list. Yes, you "know there is something
better", but it isn't worth the effort to obtain it.
Paul and I invested countless hours creating Dabo because it solved a
very strong need we both had: a completely free (in licensing terms, not just
cost) application development tool that we could then use to earn our living.
Over a dozen others have contributed to the project, because they found an area
in Dabo that either we hadn't created, or which didn't work as well as they
needed, so they took it upon themselves to add that piece. These are a tiny
fraction of the current users of Dabo, and that's pretty typical: most people
who use a product either don't feel competent or don't have the time to
contribute.
> What Ed did not point out is that most of the seriously successful open
> source projects already have funding of some sort. Some in the volunteers
> from corporate backing, and some with actual sponsorship funding. It
> generally helps to have revenue for the developers to keep them with
> incentive to keep moving. While there are some general apps/products out
> there that break this mold, we see funding comes in after the fact with
> support contracts and "professional licensing."
You left out the most important and by far the most common reason for
corporate sponsorship: they themselves actually use the product, and benefit
from the development that they fund. Lots of companies contributed money and
personnel (who cost money) to the Apache project, because they wanted to run
their websites on the best possible server. It was *in their self-interest* to
contribute to the project.
Rackspace supports several open source development efforts, most
notably Drizzle and Cassandra. We've hired many of the project leads, and
support others by sponsoring their appearances at conferences. Sure, we do use
most of the software ourselves to some degree or another, but even that's not
the main reason. The main return on this investment is mindshare in the world
of developers, so that more and more of them will choose Rackspace when it
comes time to host their IT infrastructure.
My point is that your narrow view of "payback" for corporate investment
is so far from the norm as to be incorrect. There is a fundamental difference
between the world of proprietary software, where source code is guarded at all
costs, and the open source world, which shares source code. By sharing the
source, you eliminate the zero-sum game that the proprietary world relies on,
allowing many people to benefit from the contribution of a few. Your
description of the VFPStudio project sounds like that was exactly what this was
designed to be: building on the work of others (the Shell), relying on
community involvement to get it done, and then freely sharing the resulting
product.
-- Ed Leafe
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