The Flex Show - Episode 40: March News
It's been a while since we did a news show so this one is jam packed with great stuff.
Notes
- Dotcomit Focus Groups ( Give Jeff's company your input and get $50 ).
- 360|Flex
- Flex 3 AIR 1 Launch
- Matt Chotin's Video
- 360Conferences AIR Session Survey
- Flex 4 Feature Requests
- Flex 4 Features Survey
- Granite DS Docs
- Granite DS Dowloads
- pyAMF
- pyAMF Download
- Adobe Rights Management Server
- TechDirt Article
- Universal Mind Cairngorm Components on RIA Forge
- Universal Mind Cairngorm Components on Google Code
- Blaze DS, LiveCycle Comparison
- OpenSource.adobe.com
- Merapi
- Flash on the iPhone
- Desktop Tower Defense
- Flex Docs Browser
- RIA Dev Shed
- Flex Camp Cleveland
- Flex Camp Wall Street
- on AIR Train Tour
- MAX 2008 Dates and Locations
- Command Proxy
- WebORB Free
- InsideRIA
- ColdFusion Weekly Round Table
- Topic of Jeff's Rant
With all of the examples of Flex use on the web these days, with the success of conferences like 360Flex and the Flex camps, with the fact that Adobe has even bought a Flex-based web application (Buzzword)...and the fact that you, as an active member of the Flex community, are aware of all this...how could you possibly think that there was a chance of Adobe abandoning Flex because they were open-sourcing it and then expressing that fear on the podcast?!
You should have taken all the evidence into consideration and thought long and hard about what Damon was saying, because Damon was less than specific about exactly why he considered the New Atlanta decision to be a signal of failure.
Adam Lehman (an Adobe Platform Evangelist) was a bit more specific in his blog post on the topic:
http://www.adrocknaphobia.com/post.cfm/open-sounce...
Based on that post and Damon's post, my impression is that there's no love lost between Adobe's ColdFusion team and New Atlanta,so that's their reason for wanting to see New Atlanta's decision as a surrender: it's got nothing to do with open source software itself.
Jeff, you're a member of the ColdFusion community: you know enough people such that you could have made some inquiries and figured out what the real deal was. Really, why worry your listeners unnecessarily?
Rant over.
Sorry to be so harsh, but it really struck a nerve.
My intent was to facilitate discussion, so thanks for sharing an opinion. :-)
I do not think there is any chance of Adobe abandoning Flex. Although I can understand how you may have gotten that impression. I said "When Adobe open sourced Flex, does that mean they are abandoning the market and giving up on it?" It was meant as rhetorical. I have my answer; and I would suspect that so do our listeners.
I wanted to address the inconsistent view on open source that I am getting from Adobe employees. Mixed signals could do harm to the market, and potentially Adobe, in the long-term.
I saw Adam's post too. I did not feel that Adam's post contained any commentary (good or bad) on open source software, and as such did not apply to my point that Adobe was presenting an inconsistent stance on open source.
I'm not sure what other evidence you wanted me to consider; but please feel free to share if there is something you think I should read.
For all those listening, Matt Woodward repeated much of my sentiment on the the ColdFusion Weekly BlueDragon Open Source Roundtable episode. http://www.coldfusionweekly.com/index.cfm?event=sh... . You should know, Brian, since you were part of that episode's roundtable discussion ( Starts around 1:10:30 ).
But I think there's a difference between expressing a desire for clarification as part of a discussion (as Matt did in that ColdFusion Weekly episode) and phrasing that question as a concern about the future of Flex and a concern that you're "wasting your time" by working with Flex: that "wasting your time" comment made it seem a lot less rhetorical and a bit more personal, IMHO.
I'm probably guilty of overreacting a bit: most of the regular listeners of the podcast are well aware of the health and robustness of Flex as a technology. But I deal with a lot of people who, because of the way their minds work, would easily misinterpret your rant as a concern about putting all of one's technology eggs in the Flex basket, and while we both know that's not the message you intended to send, they won't know that.
Whose opinions do you think a potential client will put more stock in? An Adobe Employee? Or some guy on the Internet who likes the sounds of his voice?
@Brian I was happy that you returned to state that you agree on an 'official expression'. I think that it is important to the community that we understand the Adobe open-source culture, at least in a broad sense. And I see exactly what you are saying related to whatever animosity exists between the rival products of ColdFusion and BlueDragon. Heck, the CF guys were just having a party because they have a better product! Still, it is important to make the distinction between open-sourcing and abandoning their market when you have products which are both open-source and closed commercial.
There's my .02