Thanks for the balance, Richard.
Phil Davis
Richard Gaskin wrote:
Pondering the many posts in this thread I'm not sure I could contribute
much of value, since Chipp covered many of my own thoughts, esp. re. the
usefulness of a US presence and the need for a completely unambiguous
differentiation between the pro and hobbyist products.
But I did have one thought that I hadn't read here yet:
Just how popular does Rev need to be?
RunRev Ltd. has been doing a good job of expanding the user base, as
evidenced by the many newcomers on this list over the last year (and a
hearty welcome to y'all!). And it seems they have plans in store to
continue along those lines, perhaps even more effectively in this coming
year than ever before.
But given the various factors that go into choosing programming tools,
I'm not sure Rev will ever become the world leader, nor need it be.
If we look at the downstream economy from Rev-based products, taking
into account the aggregate sum of all cost savings to developers,
publishers, and end-users, there's certainly plenty of money floating
around to keep the engine well updated and enhanced in perpetuity.
That's great for us.
And as long as RunRev Ltd. is appropriately "right-sized" (please pardon
the corporate-speak), there's no reason why it can't be quite profitable
for the owners, even at the current audience size. Extra bonus points
that the audience is growing as well as it is. That's great for them.
Given the state of things as they are today, I see less of a risk of Rev
not growing fast enough than I do in attempting to grow beyond what the
market will support.
It's really easy to spend money trying to be the next Macromedia, and so
much work to do so that it may be easy to overlook that there already is
one, and to overlook the many historical opportunities which helped
bring them to where they are, circumstances that are not reproducible
today (such as having the world's first plugin bundling agreement for
Flash).
Sure, there may be a temptation for the owners to try to make billions,
and there is an attraction for us users if Rev took over the world so we
could say "I told you so" to everyone else. :)
But there's plenty of money available to profitably support what the
engine needs to keep moving forward, even now.
For myself, I'm not at all worried about viability or profitability. My
greater concern is about reach.
Geoffrey Moore talks about market adoption of technologies in his books
"Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado". I won't get into the
details here (but would encourage any software publisher to read these
twice), but the most relevant concept here is how in a technology market
there will be only one leader, and all other players must subdivide the
remainder. Given the power of larger firms like Microsoft I doubt Rev
will ever overtake tools like VB. If the good folks at RunRev
understand the rules of engagement for being a lower-tier player, they
can do well. But if they attempt to take over the world, they risk
exhausting all resources in the effort.
Thus far I've seen only healthy growth activities that don't yet
evidence a desire to reach beyond what is possible. I just hope they
don't take everything posted here too seriously and start distracting
themselves from their reachable goals to go tilting at windmills.
There is only one market leader, but there are many highly profitable
companies at all levels of participation.
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
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