[REBOL] Re: Rebol SDK vs Command
From: petr:krenzelok:seznam:cz at: 18-Sep-2007 7:13
Hi Ed,
your answers were one of the best so far, in regards to the topic. You
seem to have good knowledge of how marketing work ...
> I think the main benefit of FOSS is that the developer receives a
> degree of protection from of a corporate vendor. Software developers
> do not want an external entity automatically inserted into their
> livelihood as co-partner and co-captain of their destiny. It would be
> irrational to accept such an arrangement when there are dozens of
> highly capable languages with completely open or very liberal
> licenses. (Would RT use a closed, proprietary language to code R3? No
> way!!)
>
But this one, I am not sure is accurate :-) Why would RT not use e.g. MS
Developer Studio to code REBOL? I know, they can always get free C
compiler, but as for low level, the story is different. I work for large
company, worked for even larger in the past. Those measures simply DON'T
fit! Do you want to know opinion of most CIO's on open-source here? They
really don't care! That one is for Carl Read too - CIOs DON'T care. They
are not stupid. You don't buy only product, but also support. Do you
know the price of 1 man-day of e.g. SAP or IBM consultant? You would buy
5x REBOL/Command SDK for that price. In the situation, when you don't
want to extend your team, you have to choose technology, where you can
take a phone, and have a consultant working for you in few day.
Don't get me wrong, as I said, I can understand open-source advantages,
but I can also imagine open-source geek coding tonnes of apps in php,
out of order, non documented, and once I need to replace the guy, I am
screwed, because mostly those open-source geeks want to do everything
their way
, not respecting higher level integration opinions. And
believe me - If I should allow my guys to use PHP, I would do it from
the same perspective, as introducing JAVA, REBOL, anything else. And
believe me - open-source nature would be the least important point to
consider. Do I get the support or not? This community is VERY helpful. I
have been on ml of several other open-source products, yet I got worse
support than with REBOL. Now what is that?
As for RT going down. It was already said, that source code is put into
Escrow - if RT goes down, it gets released. Besides that - most of R3 IS
open-sourced. RT keeps platform agnostic interpreter/language code. Do
those open-source proponents complain about MS non releasing source of
Windows? REBOL calls tonnes of platform functions, to which there is no
code available, yet they don't complain.
Simply put - I don't believe, that fully open-sourcing REBOL would help
much nowadays. There are other factors. REBOL had its window of
oportunity, which was missed. We have to fight the position hard once
again. And I believe being open-source or not does not really help. I
always thought I like REBOL because of its capabilities. I really
wonder, how can anyone join the community just because something is
open-sourced? That person surely will not understand advantages of REBOL
aproach, beause if that person would understand it, he/she would like to
use the technology anyway ...
Petr
