On Feb 14, 2005, at 3:27 PM, Chris Barker wrote:
Wolfgang Keller wrote:If for each given problem one implementation was chosen as "the official
one"
To some extent, while Guido could endorse something (which is more or less the case with IDLE), there is no way to name something the "official one", and even if there were, there's nothing to stop folks from going out on their own anyway. Thus is the nature of open-source. How many Linux distros are there?
Remember that most of this stuff is written by folks who are "scratching an itch". The scratching itself is as much the point as getting rid of the itch, and many people find it much more satisfying to do something in just their own way than adapting to other's ideas and style.
Very little becomes standard by declaration: If someone makes something really good, it could evolve into a standard.
By the way, I've often thought of forming a company that would produce just what we've been talking about here, but with a bit of a twist:
A set of Python environments for doing specialized development. Some ideas are:
--A database app environment, as easy to use as FileMaker, but with a real language at it's core.
--A scientific programming environment, everything that MATLAB gives you, but again, with a real language at the core.
--Maybe a web framework.
--And you'd probably need to do a general purpose IDE as well.
Anyone have any venture capital?
I know that there are open-source versions of all of these: SciPy, Dabo, Pythoncard, Zope, etc., but they don't have the polish that you'd need to attract the type of newbies that are at the core of this thread.
I'm definitely interested in these things (more some than others), but I'm currently professionally committed to some other stuff. The real problem I'd have with this sort of business venture is doing it in a way that's compatible with open source, but still making enough money to keep doing it without spending too much time doing consulting.
I'd definitely want to give these things away as liberally licensed open source, which might mean that it has to be done in the context of a non-profit foundation (like Chandler via OSAF). However, it might be possible to get away on a smaller scale by simply having a set of robust open source tools as the "lite" version, and a "pro" version with a couple nice extra features that isn't free (like the difference between OmniGraffle and OmniGraffle Pro). I've never seen the donation model work at the smaller scale.
-bob
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