On Jul 5, 2007, at 1:16 PM, Galen Rhodes wrote:
I predict that, unless there is a financial reward of some kind,
that WOLips development will stagnate and/or come to a complete
halt within the next 18 months if not sooner. And yes, that is a
challenge to the developers to hopefully prove me wrong.
I doubt that very much. The development to date has been developers
building what _they_ personally need to get their job done. Most of
what is in Entity Modeler and WOComponent Editor are things that Mike
need to do his job more efficiently. He, and mDimension, were kind
enough to donate the results. As long as we WO developers have unmet
needs, development will continue. It may happen in fits and bursts
as our needs dictate, but it will happen. It will only "stagnate" if
all of our needs are met (or if those with needs are too damn lazy to
do anything about them). And in that case, it will be more of
"stable" than "stagnant".
This has always been the problem and always will be the problem is
that the OpenSource community has trained people to expect free
software to the point were the users actually refuse to pay for it
no matter how good it is. Usually people try to get their
employers to buy it for them (which is were I get 99% of my
software) but if they have to shell out the money themselves then
they won't do it. They'd rather steal it first.
Sadly, I must agree with this.
But from a developer's point of view, it's really hard to eat when
you're not making any money. As a result the OpenSource developers
tend to loose their motivation to continue development of their
projects. Instead they tend to go off and focus their energies on
projects that do make them money.
Or make their work on projects that make money more efficient. Don't
forget that. Money does not need to be made directly. And this is
the primary reason, IMHO, why WOComponent Editor is not WYSIWYG. A
developer set out to make something that would be very efficient to
use while requiring less effort than it would save. I think that
Mike has succeeded admirably in this. While it is not flashy, it is
far more productive for me than WOBuilder ever was and I am FAR
happier using it than I was using WOBuilder. Too many people seem to
be more concerned with which font is used or IDE layout, or cute drag
and drop tricks than they are with actual, real life productivity.
OK, enough of that rant...
The end result is that OpenSource software, like WOLips, tend to
reach what I call the "Good Enough For Free Stage" and then the
developers abandon it. We've seen this in the Linux community for
a number of years now. Things are still progressing but VERY
SLOWLY. Meanwhile SourceForge is littered with the bones of
abandoned OpenSource projects that developers have lost interest in.
Which to me means they were finished or poorly thought out and
required more effort than they were going to save.
Chuck
--
Practical WebObjects - for developers who want to increase their
overall knowledge of WebObjects or who are trying to solve specific
problems.
http://www.global-village.net/products/practical_webobjects
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