[REBOL] Re: Licensing, components ... Re: REBOL FAQ updated
From: jason::cunliffe::verizon::net at: 14-Sep-2002 15:46
> >From a business standpoint, the value of the REBOL
> platform by itself is very little (really), regardless
> of how cross-platform it is. That is because the value
> of the REBOL platform is determined by how many people
> are using it and developing with it.
Yes.
> In the hands of tens of thousands of developers and
> users, however, the value could be huge. RT should be
> doing whatever they can to make sure that developers
> in key markets are happy and that the REBOL
> interpreter is being distributed far and wide.
Yes.
> Cross-platform capability is a solution to a problem
> that affects a relatively small percentage of
> developers in the desktop world. It mainly affects the
> ability of a language to survive platform extinctions;
> it has little affect on popularity or profitability
> (despite what Sun marketing has drilled into our
> heads).
Hmm...
The most interesting new magazine I read these days is "Bio.IT World". An
excellent [free] monthly tracking the explosion of software, hardware, politics,
science, business tech and biology. It is very well written, and provides a
fascinating window into the new area of science known as 'proteomics'. I am not
a trained scientist, but am delighted to stretch my reading with such good
front-row seats. The lucid editorial style makes the field very accessible to
non-specialist.
http://www.bio-itworld.com
http://www.bio-itworld.com/subscribe/
The September issue has an article titled "Peeking at Big Pharma's IT Playbook",
discussing IT at the Drug Discovery Technology World Congress.
http://www.bio-itworld.com/news/090902_report1148.html
.."One especially promising track of the conference was exclusively devoted to
IT. Its focus: integrating data from a variety of scientific endeavors and
technologies in an effort to streamline the present chaos of instruments and
software that can't communicate with each other. "We have a format nightmare,"
said Robert DeWitte, director of marketing for Advanced Chemistry Development
Inc. "We have a data integration problem.""
...
For Peter Smith, director of discovery research at Wyeth Research, the familiar
buy-vs.-build dilemma in IT has turned out to be especially painful in the
pharmaceutical industry. When a drug company builds its own software, Smith
said,
as soon as you have the stuff in production, it's now a legacy."
But buying can be worse. "The software you buy is often generic," Smith said,
and so has little competitive advantage for you. You spend most of your time
customizing it to your organization.
Smith proposes a more modular, nonproprietary approach in which all of a
company's tools run on a network using standard file formats. "No one vendor can
supply all the pieces you want with all the variety you want," he said. He
prefers an a la carte approach, ticking off modular products from SciTegic Inc.
and Spotfire Inc. "I didn't buy all of Spotfire," Smith said. "I just bought the
visualization component."
Smith said he won't buy any more applications that do not support
industry-standard formats. For example, he loves Java, which kicked off the
component revolution in software.
./Jason
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