I agree with Glen here. Every "cool" tool with which I've ever been involved, has been actually written for some customer, on their dime. Then some agreement was reached at some point, that the tool could be marketed separately. And voila, we have a hundred tools running around the marketplace (or at least we did before 75 of them were gobbled up by hardware vendors).
If there is enough of a market interest than all the "specialized hooks" embedded for Customer X and Y have to be removed before the product is really saleable, or else you have to tell the customer you have to "customize" it for them, which really means taking out all the special hooks while they pay for it :) -----Original Message----- From: Glen Batchelor <[email protected]> To: 'U2 Users List' <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Feb 3, 2011 3:46 pm Subject: Re: [U2] What do you do with CallHTTP? Actually I think they should be responsible, but the decisions of which bindings are made available should only be driven by the community. The vendor knows their own product and what it is capable of better than anyone else. All-Spec sells product for a profit as a way to operate but we are also solutions providers on many facets. With that in mind I see parallels here compared to a DB vendor offering a product that works as part of a business solution. To that end, I would never spend time and money researching and building web services or desktop applications for our customers if they have no use for them. Why should the DB vendor spend time and money building a language binding that no wants and is not readily useable in an existing business solution? On the flip side, I also would not leave it up to our customers to build their own inquiry app that scrapes our web pages for stock and pricing. I would prefer to provide them with a proper interface that fits their needs so we can finish the job and move on to other tasks. Unfortunately, unless both sides are eager to meet in the middle for the benefit of both then a symbiotic relationship will never happen. In many cases the possibility of such a relationship is never discussed or offered and therefore a lack of technological capability is wrongfully perceived. > As always, the problem is that projects like this, for the good > of everyone, tend to fall on the few who often can afford it the > least. We've both started building fires that smoldered and died due to a lack of attention. At some point you have to move on when it becomes obvious that the community is not interested. When you know your vision is right, though, you should step back and change your scope of view on the project. The approach you're taking may be the primary incentive for your involvement, but the goal is just wrong. The opposite is also true as I've experienced. The goal may be popular but the original approach to get there is too convoluted or requires too many different skill sets to establish a functioning starter project. > > I'm going to use "I" and "me" below, but this applies to anyone > in this market who does free development as a community service. > There are a lot of us here. > > I create things like language bindings because I think it's cool > and because it will help our market. In the mean time there are > people fearing for loss of their jobs because their platform of > choice is too obscure and missing language bindings (for example) > that are common everywhere else. Demand/motivation and > supply/desire in this market must learn to meet in the middle. > You can't save the inept or the obstinate so don't expect solutions for them to bring you income. Make your fun tools, during your free time, because you want to. I know you do that and I do that too. I just don't publish them anymore. :) FOSS is a great way to enhance technology, but only if the end-users trust the developers and are willing to work hand-in-hand with them to keep the project moving. How often is it that a tool or solution is dropped in, plugged up, and then forgotten about for years? Most of the solutions deployed in our community are rock-solid performers and they don't need much attention once they're deployed. You can't expect just anyone to pick up a FOSS project that's a year old, backed by 2 or 3 periodic coders and say "I just gotta play with that on our 1000-user system." > I know if I solicit donations so that I can pay my mortgage while > providing you (collectively) with something that will increase > the value of your platform, I'll be shunned for trying to sell > yet another product (what a concept *sigh*). The public outcry > will be deafening "but it should be FREE", implying of course > that someone else should do the work for free for everyone's > benefit, like it is (supposedly) in the rest of the world. With > no motivation, this project that has been in the queue for about > two years, will remain on the bottom of the TODO list, and may > never get finished. > > (Personal note: And for anyone who thinks I only do things > for-fee, look for my name at Codeplex, Sourceforge, github, and > elsewhere. I do contribute to FOSS, and I contribute freeware to > this market as well. But when my free time translates to someone > else's profitability or continued employment, I don't think it's > unreasonable to ask for something in return. Generous does not > equal stupid.) > > But if neither I nor anyone else does this (for free or fee), the > net result will be that some years later people will still be > lamenting in forums that such things don't exist and that it > should all come from the DBMS vendors. Nothing will change. > I've been saying that for years and here we are - nothing has > changed. That fundamental mindset is really what cripples this > market. That's also what doesn't change. It's not a lack of > communication tools, language bindings, admin utilities, or other > things people mention occasionally. If people attach value to > things they say are valuable to them, this market may actually > move forward a little. > I don't agree completely. The DBMS vendors should be providing the bindings and integration hooks the developer community needs to build better solutions than what is available from other verticals. The only way that the DBMS vendors can do that is if the community speaks in a united voice. That has been discussed before and a community-wide voice is hard to establish. The developer's association was a flop due to my lack of time and a lack of organizational and promotional power. I also have zero experience establishing associations. I still think that such an organization would be a great asset to everyone. The U2 users group has proven to be successful, right? > Tony Gravagno > Nebula Research and Development > TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com > remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com/blog > Visit PickWiki.com! Contribute! > http://Twitter.com/TonyGravagno ---------------------------------------- Glen Batchelor IT Director/CIO/CTO All-Spec Industries phone: (910) 332-0424 fax: (910) 763-5664 E-mail: [email protected] Web: http://www.all-spec.com Blog: http://blog.all-spec.com ---------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list [email protected] http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list [email protected] http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
