RE: Witango-Talk: .NET vs Witango vs. Oracle

[Ben Johansen]

Hi Chris,   You nailed it with this… “The reason Wi probably has a stronger global community than a US community is that Wi is not in the Bay area and not nose deep in the PR spin machine.”   Guys, at least those of us in America need to remember that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily revolve around us. In the grand scheme of things with regards to Witango, the US is a small fish. I hope this doesn’t crush or offend anyone from the US ;-)   Those all that have posted on this thread have very excellent point, but I feel they are based a US perspective and not the world perspective.   As many of you have stated that the productivity of the product and the hard work from you keeps it going in the US. We all know that this product is for superior to most with regards to productions speed and ease of use, but there is this crystal palace mentality in American IS departments that they like there nice big salaries and this product flies in the face of that.   The amount of money that With would have to spend to break down the crystal palace would break With. It is not personal it is just business.   So take comfort in knowing that your efforts have put a dent in the crystal palace. ;-)   You can lead an IS department to the holy grail of web dev environments but you cant get buy in – lol   Just my .053 cents worth   Ben Johansen - http://www.pcforge.com Authorized Witango & MDaemon Reseller Available for Web App. Developement From: Chris Millet [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 9:50 AM To: witango-talk@witango.com Subject: Re: Witango-Talk: .NET vs Witango vs. Oracle   Public Relations Everything you are saying here has more to do with perception than with reality. The reason Wi probably has a stronger global community than a US community is that Wi is not in the Bay area and not nose deep in the PR spin machine. I'm not saying Wi needs to be in the US, but rather that it may be more difficult to pick up on how companies like Microsoft, Macromedia (now Adobe), Apple, Oracle and others do it simply by not being immersed in the buzz on a daily basis. In my minds eye, there is definitely a place for Witango on the landscape of web app tools, it is just that it is yet to be discovered, evangelized and publicized by the world at large.    Product Positioning  I like the comparison made earlier between Wi and FileMaker. Both share similar traits in their respective arenas, but FileMaker has the advantage of being able to tap into the marketing and PR know how of it's parent company, Apple. In a perfect world (or at least my perfect world), Witango would position itself in the void between the overly-cumbersome Lasso and overly-complex WebObjects and ride Apple's ease-of-use coat tails to become noticed by the world and maybe even be bought out by Apple (insert image of Phil and Sophie on their own private beach somewhere with Zinc Oxide smeared noses, coconut drinks in hand, and the sound of seagulls and crashing waves in the background). Now that Adobe's bought out Macromedia, they are poised to make significant progress in the web arena – something they've been trying desperately to do for years and failing. And with Microsoft already ahead in the game, Apple needs to do something similar to what they did with Final Cut Pro and the iApps. I know Apple may seem like a small player compared to Microsoft and Adobe, but they are still much bigger than Wi – and from what I have experienced regarding database driven web apps and Mac OS X, Apple could use a few pointers from the likes of Phil and crew.   Just my two cents worth. Chris             On May 20, 2005, at 10:31 AM, Robert Garcia wrote: I know, the most frustrating part, is that you want nothing more than to keep using witango.   The main thing for me, is not just that no one knows about it anymore, that has been the case since before With picked it up. The problem is for me, that in the last yearish, I think things have gotten significantly worse. Thinking about the response from Phil:   "Because no one has heard of it" is such a bizzare argument.  Yes people use it all the time but in my experience it is not the reason for making a decision.  It is just a convenient argument that is hard to rebuke so you need to have a strategy ready for when it comes up.   Every new client anyone gets has not heard of them until they are introduced to them for the first time by somebody, but their intelligence and reasoning power manages to kick in and they get past it.  You need to sell your own Company to get the work, so why is the software tools you use any different.  Sell it as you would your own skills.  The IT industry has matured a lot since the days of FUD and hype.  Start making the argument about deliverables, cost of delivery, cost of ownership, meeting deadlines, risk management, code consistency, etc and stop the argument being about technology.  Make it about how you will perform the task.  If they want the "name brand technology" or Standards based solution then you can offer them J2EE.  The Witango Java Framework and compiler were developed for this reason.  A few clicks and the application can be deployed to a J2EE server.  You can develop with the Dev Studio and deploy to JBoss, BEA, WebSphere, SUN, etc.  If a company has heard of .Net then they have definitely heard of J2EE.   As I think about this, I disagree more and more. If you were in management, choosing what language your company should go with for mission critical apps, what would you do to make an informed decision? I know that if some guy at BigHead Technology came to me and told me all the great things about witango, that would mean alot, but I would go on the net, and do a little research of my own.   Give it a shot, and tell me if you find what I did. Do some searches for witango, and various keywords on google. You will find very little info compared to other languages, but when you do find witango stuff, you will find sites that are not being kept up, with news from 2002 or 2003 on the front page. Broken links, and MANY sites that don't exist anymore, domains for sale, distributors that have closed up shop, training schedules that don't have any classes anymore. I am not making this up, do it for yourself. All the places that several people, including myself (www.theradmac.com) are either abandoned, or gone. Even the ones that look like they are being kept up, like webenergy, most of the sections say, under construction. I even went to one of the old standards, my google search of "witango developers" pulled up Scott Caddillac's site at http://xmlx.ca/ , I couldn't believe it, it is powered by ASP.net! This used to be a great site of all things witango. I used to go on there and look up his list of witango developed sites to see if he got mine on there. I can't even find that list anymore. And the only witango stuff is 2 years old. His site looks like all things .NET now.   I feel like I have been busy working for a while, and now I am taking inventory, and where the hell did everyone go? I feel much worse about this issue then I did when I started it.   (PLEASE NOTE: I mean no ill will or offense to any of the people responsible for these sites. I pulled my site down also, due to lack of response, and I couldn't justify the time, and due to moving my family across state.)   And the worst for me, I used to point to the site serverwatch.com for clients, they could go and see a positive review (4+ stars out of 5) for tango/witango. Server watch was one of those places that actually seemed to give Wtiango merit, even though it wasn't the most popular. However, if you read the review now, it is a 2+ star review and if you read it, it is pretty much saying the same thing. It says the witango dev community seems scarce, and ends with the question "Why Witango?"   http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/article.php/17109_2227661   So after doing some googling, and reading that, what kind of a decision would you make as an IT decision maker?   I can honestly say, I didn't see this review until late last night, after I was looking for some positive info. You see, I have to fly to LA on Tuesday and meet with PeachDirect. They have bought in another developer to quote rewriting the whole thing in .NET. The other team will be there also. I have a great rep with peach at this point, and was looking for some ammo to take with me to help defend the witango decision. After doing a little research myself on the web, I feel I will just look like an idiot with the dev community looking like a ghost town, witangos own developer.witango.com site not working properly, and the only review I can find a bad one, my best argument is I can rewrite it in .NET a lot cheaper/better/faster than any other new developer, cuz I know the code like the back of my hand.   Anyway, I have been really excited about 5.5, so much so that I paid to upgrade my servers, just haven't done the migration just yet. But I have a feeling I won't be doing that. I have a meeting with Adobe again also in a few weeks about eventpix, and the last thing I want is for one of these guys to go and google witango, like I did last night, and find what I found. It looks like witango is going away from the outside eye, not here to stay, and worthy of their confidence. Yet I know it is not, I know that Phil and co. have worked hard on 5.5 and are still working, but it sure doesn't look that way from the outside, and it doesn't seem like anyone is going to try to do anything about it.   --    Robert Garcia President - BigHead Technology VP Application Development - eventpix.com 13653 West Park Dr Magalia, Ca 95954 ph: 530.645.4040 x222 fax: 530.645.4040 [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bighead.net/ - http://eventpix.com/   On May 20, 2005, at 7:10 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please do not get me wrong. Witango is my tool of choice. I love it and try to promote it when I can. But I have lost clients over it, lost bids because of it, but still I hang in there and hope that it will turn around so instead of 4 providers that are found that will take a site, thousands would respond. I wish there was more I could do to help get this product out of the basement and up to par with a lot of the other languages and tools out there. Maybe I could land some more work. and maybe others would be more comfortable about using it if they knew there was a good, large community that supported it.   ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf   ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf