The future of Rebol - achieving critical mass
[1/15] from: geoff:productivity at: 21-May-2001 12:15
Hi folks
I have just been evaluating Rebol, (with the kind help of Carl and this
list) and it seems to have a lot going for it. But I am wary of making a
major commitment, as I have reservations about its future, given the RT
business model. At the risk of being flamed, I thought I would share my
concerns and see what the wider community feels about this issue.
I have been bitten before by technically superior products with the wrong
marketing model - I invested in the Amiga and NextStep to name just two. A
lot of developers lost their shirts on NextStep. I fear that Rebol may go
the same way. As Windoze, VB, ASP etc demonstrate so eloquently, technical
excellence and commercial success are not at all the same thing in the
software industry.
I have two concerns about the current approach:
- First, I fear that RT will fail to achieve a critical mass of users
- Second, that they will fail to achieve a critical mass of libraries and
APIs
It is hard to get a new language established, especially if it is based on a
paradigm that will be unfamiliar to most programmers (ie functional
programming). I suspect that it may be impossible if you charge hundreds of
dollars for the basic functionality in /Command.
Rebol is up against powerful, free environments like Perl / Python / PHP /
Ruby / Dylan / Lisp / Scheme / Guile etc etc. Most are Open Source. Rebol is
nice, but the source is closed and by charging for the basics it is entering
the market with a huge handicap, right from the start.
So far as I can see, commercial success in the software industry is all
about achieving a critical mass of users and generating Java style buzz. If
I were Carl and his backers, I would be giving away the full versions of
/Command, /View and the application wrapper, to get momentum going.
I appreciate that this would take commercial courage, but in the medium term
I think it would be much the safest strategy. With a large and vibrant
community the future of Rebol would be assured, and they could be generating
much greater revenues from selling advanced servers and applications,
specialised libraries, an integrated IDE, and consultancy than they will
ever generate selling /Core to a tiny community. With their current
approach, they may well be going up the same dead end as all the closed 4GL
languages that were supposed to revolutionise the industry (remember them,
anyone?).
And there would be a second, very major advantage. By charging for the C/C++
API they are creating a major disincentive for the community to integrate
Rebol with external libraries. Much of the success of PHP, for example, can
be attributed to its APIs to external libraries - almost 2000 internet
related functions available at the last count. I have an idea for an Open
Source project, but it would require /Core to run and this just does not sit
well with the Free Software ethos. If Rebol is to achieve a critical mass of
APIs and library code, Carl must somehow harness the energies of the Rebol
community. Compare what is available in Perl or PHP with the Rebol code
repositories and you will see the nature of the problem...
What do people think?
Geoff Caplan
[2/15] from: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 21-May-2001 13:59
Hello Geoff,
very shortly, as I am pressed for time:
- we definitely need per component pricing model. While I am not currently
interested in Oracle component (we have DB2 here :-), I would love to even buy
FastCGI, but in no way I will spent some 350 USD, unless it is our company money
:-) So just for you - RT already stated there are going to be run-time
loadable/unloadable dynamic components avaiblable, so let's hope the future is
not so much far away ...
- although I am not computer sound folk, sound component in non-free version of
Rebol doesn't make much sense imo
- /Apache was cancelled. Currently there is only FastCGI option, but it comes
with /Command only - so hobby or smaller web projects are dead with Rebol - who
is interested in CGI if PHP or other direct Apache modules are available?
- Rebol killer app - so, maybe you consider Perl as being so popular, but, as
for me - newcomer to web programming - Perl for e.g. would not be buy for me.
Maybe Python - but then - Rebol is very ambitious here. It is very young
language. Although we don't have Zope e.g., we do have Express - it's really
very well thought out and cool collaboration platform.
Maybe some kind of Authoring tool would be good too, but the question is - what
should it serve for? I can imagine creation of dbase based apps, so you place
items on screen, create update mechanisms, views etc. - but that's me - having
dbase background. Last week I saw presentation of Hybris Jakarta. Java based -
it was not so difficult to imagine similar functionality in Rebol - you have
just project tree and can import various java beans, simply said objects with
exposed apis. You are not dependant on app author - you can just incorporate any
java bean around ... I can imagine small "reblets" floating around ...
... but .... how large is Rebol community to create all those apps? I hope Rebol
will gain some more public acceptance soon. We all can help. I for e.g. wrote
article about Rebol to one Czech computer magazine, and I am thinking about
writing another one covering Rebol/View. We need more publicity.
One other important question - imagine corporate sphere - all companies have
their existing IT infrastructure already. What do Rebol (or other scripting
solution) offers them to choose it as part of solution? Maybe Rebol/Command has
some advantage here because of its database capabilities, but maybe it would be
worth the money to enable incorporation of Rebol into external environments? (if
possible)
-pekr-
Geoff Caplan wrote:
[3/15] from: gschwarz:telstra:easymail:au at: 21-May-2001 22:47
At work (about 20+) have heard or are using Rebol, because I used it a home
and have made one very useful program for staff to use. Most PC's have Rebol
running all day and think it is great, it only took about 6 months. The work
tool I made was accepted as OK at the start and many did not use it, but a
few months later they reused it and would not go back. It always takes time
for people to change there thinking and I do not think you can force it any
faster on them what is taking place. Carl and crew know many things can be
done, but time is needed to do it right, and get a solid base of users.
I write a weekly computer article and have used the word "Rebol" at odd
times, the next few are on programming and Rebol does get a big plug.
Regards,
Greg
[4/15] from: joel:neely:fedex at: 21-May-2001 8:00
Hi, Greg,
Tanja Schwarz wrote:
> I write a weekly computer article and have used the word
> "Rebol" at odd times, the next few are on programming and
> Rebol does get a big plug.
>
Are your articles published on the 'net? If so, where
might we find them?
-jn-
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Programming languages: compact, powerful, simple ...
Pick any two!
joel'dot'neely'at'fedex'dot'com
[5/15] from: holger:rebol at: 21-May-2001 6:03
On Mon, May 21, 2001 at 12:15:52PM +0100, Geoff Caplan wrote:
> I have been bitten before by technically superior products with the wrong
> marketing model - I invested in the Amiga and NextStep to name just two. A
> lot of developers lost their shirts on NextStep.
NextStep: agreed. Amiga: actually the Amiga was a commercial success, for
many years, with millions of units sold. In Europe it was the second-best
selling platform, ahead of the Mac. In the US it was by far the best-selling
platform for video applications. In the end it died because the company owning
the technology went backrupt because of losses from its sales of (IBM-compatible)
PCs running MS-DOS, not because of bad Amiga sales due to lack of marketing. Yes,
Amiga marketing could have been better, but this was not the deciding factor. Up
until the very end Amiga sales were still doing pretty well.
After the death of Commodore the Amiga never recovered, mostly because of long
court battles and incompetence and lack of vision among the new owners (Escom,
Gateway). And, of course, Escom later went bankrupt because of losses in
its PC sales as well...
> - First, I fear that RT will fail to achieve a critical mass of users
> - Second, that they will fail to achieve a critical mass of libraries and
> APIs
Valid concerns.
> It is hard to get a new language established, especially if it is based on a
> paradigm that will be unfamiliar to most programmers (ie functional
> programming). I suspect that it may be impossible if you charge hundreds of
> dollars for the basic functionality in /Command.
/Command is primarily a server product targetted at companies, ISPs etc., not
a consumer application. The consumer applications are /Core and /View for
basic functionality, and both are free. Extended functionality for both is
available using a shareware-like model (View/Pro and later Core/Pro), for
hobbyists. /Pro products include the /Library component and are therefore
open
systems that can be arbitrarily expanded by users.
> Rebol is up against powerful, free environments like Perl / Python / PHP /
> Ruby / Dylan / Lisp / Scheme / Guile etc etc. Most are Open Source. Rebol is
> nice, but the source is closed and by charging for the basics it is entering
> the market with a huge handicap, right from the start.
The basics (/Core and /View) ARE free.
> So far as I can see, commercial success in the software industry is all
> about achieving a critical mass of users and generating Java style buzz. If
> I were Carl and his backers, I would be giving away the full versions of
> /Command, /View and the application wrapper, to get momentum going.
>
> I appreciate that this would take commercial courage, [...]
It is not so much a matter of commercial courage, but rather of resources.
RT is a corporation with full-time employees, not a group of volunteers who
work on the language an hour every day after their regular job.
In a commercial setting it is pretty much impossible these days to develop
a product for years without any revenues.
> I think it would be much the safest strategy. With a large and vibrant
> community the future of Rebol would be assured, and they could be generating
> much greater revenues from selling advanced servers and applications,
> specialised libraries, an integrated IDE, and consultancy than they will
> ever generate selling /Core to a tiny community.
We are not selling /Core at all. /Core is distributed free of charge,
as is /View, in order to build a community, as you suggest.
We are selling /View/Pro, /Command, /Express, runtime licenses, commercial
licenses and other supporting material and services (consulting services
through REBOL Consulting, books through REBOL Press etc).
--
Holger Kruse
[holger--rebol--com]
[6/15] from: cyphre:volny:cz at: 21-May-2001 15:48
Hello Pekr and list,
----- Original Message -----
From: Petr Krenzelok <[Petr--Krenzelok--trz--cz]>
To: <[rebol-list--rebol--com]>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 1:59 PM
Subject: [REBOL] Re: The future of Rebol - achieving critical mass
> - although I am not computer sound folk, sound component in non-free
version of
> Rebol doesn't make much sense imo
>
I completely agree with you...I thought that using sound in application was
quite common since 8-bit years so why it is so special feture today in
multimedia age
? Creating sound in REBOL should be a kind of art not
commercial bussiness(I cannot imagine any commercial sound app in REBOL/View
for now...but maybe one day...)
On the other hand I'm "infected" with this great language enough to buy the
/Pro key as soon as I save $50...
Happy reboling...
Cyphre
[7/15] from: geoff:productivity at: 21-May-2001 15:16
Holger
Thanks for responding in so much detail...
> /Command is primarily a server product targetted at companies, ISPs etc.,
not
> a consumer application. The consumer applications are /Core and /View for
> basic functionality, and both are free. Extended functionality for both is
> available using a shareware-like model (View/Pro and later Core/Pro), for
> hobbyists. /Pro products include the /Library component and are therefore
> "open" systems that can be arbitrarily expanded by users.
So what are the plans for Core/Pro? Is there a release date in view?
> The basics (/Core and /View) ARE free.
>
Agreed, but unless you have access to external libraries and persistent data
they are of limited use. I would suggest the following as basic free
components if Rebol is to take off:
- Fast-cgi and/or mod_rebol (after all, the web is going to be the main
internet API for some time to come... so an internet messaging language must
surely offer an efficient web platform)
- APIs to MySQL, Postgres, Berkeley DB
- C/C++ Library access
I wonder how far Sun would have got with Java if they had charged for the
basics?
> It is not so much a matter of commercial courage, but rather of resources.
> RT is a corporation with full-time employees...
> In a commercial setting it is pretty much impossible these days to develop
> a product for years without any revenues.
>
I would hope that everyone understands this, but the question is what is the
quickest route to those revenues? It's only my opinion, but I would have
thought that the future of the company is in high-end applications like
/Express, not in selling the basic functionality that other languages offer
for free. And if there is is a large and dynamic community creating a rich
environment of libraries and applications, this is surely the environment
where sales of /Express and related consulting would take off.
>> than they will
> > ever generate selling /Core to a tiny community.
> We are not selling /Core at all. /Core is distributed free of charge,
> as is /View, in order to build a community, as you suggest.
Slip of the pen - I meant /Command, of course.
I certainly understand what you are saying, but I have a nasty feeling that
Rebol will not build the community it deserves unless the free offering
allows people to get serious work done. The word is going to be spread by
enthusiasts doing personal projects and home or off-budget projects at work
and then evangelising to their managers. With so many free options
available, they won't pay out of their own pockets to take this first step.
Geoff Caplan
[8/15] from: jeff:rebol at: 21-May-2001 8:52
Howdy, Geoff:
> > The basics (/Core and /View) ARE free.
>
> Agreed, but unless you have access to external libraries
> and persistent data they are of limited use.
Sure. I wouldn't characterize them as of "limited use",
though. There's an infinity of uses but Core and View have
less capability than their PRO counterparts (The basic uses
are a lower order of infinity than the Pro uses). Hopefully
you'll enjoy the basic View and Core (and put them to great
use as many have) but you'll be unsatisfied by their
comparative limitations to Pro. This feeling of disatisfaction
will cause you to produce your credit card and purchase the
Pro versions for their low low fee! :-)
> It's only my opinion, but I would have thought that the
> future of the company is in high-end applications like
> /Express, not in selling the basic functionality that other
> languages offer for free.
I think in the longer run, higher end components like Express
will play a role, but REBOL Tech.'s expertise is in building
REBOL.
The functionality that's nicely bundled in half a meg of REBOL
is available for free out there in other languages, if you're
willing to cobble it all together yourself. You have the time
as a programmer that it takes for you to cobble together all
functionality found in REBOL when you need it (each time you
need it) and the time it takes to make it reusable and then
tailor it to your specific needs. If the amount of money
you would have charged for this amount of time spent on a
programming task ever approaches the cost of REBOL/Pro then,
at the very least, you could be making better use of your
time! :-)
I like the simplicity of the REBOL/Pro business model: Make
something valuable and people will buy it.
[9/15] from: bertrand::mayesky::laposte::net at: 21-May-2001 17:22
Amiga is a computer and REBOL is cross-platform: the same problem cannot
occur. I am equally preoccupied with the critical mass of user but I saw a
growing interest in the computing community. If the actual Rebol team reach
a financial balance, nothing will stop the growing of REBOL possibilities
and community. And this need a commercial attitude.
The REBOL paradigm seems very familiar to me. In a certain manner it
contains 90% of what I expect from a scripting language. And after 6 years
passed to write or design applications I think that it has a real place. I
only deplore the lack of free hosting with REBOL support ...
b.
[10/15] from: dmurrill:mindspring at: 21-May-2001 10:31
Hi folks
Remember this?...
Applications are created to solve solutions in the most expedient manner, in
possible different environments... and rebol can do this fast,easy,and very
well (just my thoughts).
The Internet, for creating the WWW is a practice that's used for advertising
services.
Why would masses who need to bring services for a profit to a public by the
means of using applications? Because the Apps not seen, it just does its'
thing, it puts things into there browsed pages for us to gawk at.
Can Rebol now, automatically, without the use of other add-ons,... function
like: PHP,Pearl,Javascript,beans,Activex for the browser environment? ...
No. Remember,
before those scripting languages became openS. they talked to the browser,
and that's why we chose them.....but know there really bloated. Don't want
them.
Rebol creates apps to get things done. I believe if you want masses from
the WWW,
your stuff better talk to the page, masses like to gawk not program.
On the WWW, if your App can,t give away or sell services straight from the
IE/NS,
it will get flamed. Why ? because it's the Internet, and Browser Joe don't
have too much time to think.
Examples not used by Browser Joe &SurfChatHappy Sally:
XML .Net Java C# Lisp C/C+ etc..... Lists getting bigger...
And for all intent and purposes, they are all dying,don't fit the personal
user
internet idea. What ever can they do? Think like Cisco, become a carrier of
info for the net and do it well. (Rebols approach?)
[11/15] from: ssutherland:avhsd at: 21-May-2001 11:13
>Hi folks
>I have just been evaluating Rebol, (with the kind help of Carl and this
>list) and it seems to have a lot going for it. But I am wary of making a
>major commitment, as I have reservations about its future, given the RT
>business model. At the risk of being flamed, I thought I would share my
>concerns and see what the wider community feels about this issue.
You won't be flamed by me! :^)
>I have been bitten before by technically superior products with the wrong
>marketing model - I invested in the Amiga and NextStep to name just two. A
>lot of developers lost their shirts on NextStep. I fear that Rebol may go
>the same way. As Windoze, VB, ASP etc demonstrate so eloquently, >technical excellence
and commercial success are not at all the same thing in >the software industry.
I don't put Amiga in the same boat with NextStep and other failed technologies. Amiga
did not fail. I made some serious money in the Amiga market for an extended period of
time. The Amiga opened up new markets, desktop video, kiosk, government telemetry, etc.
We can't help the fact that Commodore completely ignored marketing and failed to cultivate
any of the new markets Amiga opened.
REBOL has the chance to open up new markets as well. It is up to developers to create
these markets as New Tek did for the Amiga. It is still a bit early in the game, and
REBOL must press forward until a developer comes up with an idea that makes money. The
key will be to find something that really can't be done any other way as easily as it
can be done in REBOL.
The other push could be to open up the government. Amiga still enjoys a huge base of
government installations. There are some very powerful things that REBOL can do for
the government, and the feds really don't care about marketing much.
>I have two concerns about the current approach:
>- First, I fear that RT will fail to achieve a critical mass of users
>- Second, that they will fail to achieve a critical mass of libraries and
>APIs
I see libraries and API's as an old paradigm, that tends to promote bloat, and unwelcome
divergence. So much can be done currently with REBOL's tremendous capacity to quickly
create high levels of abstractions. Maybe a better paradigm would be the proliferation
of dialects.
>It is hard to get a new language established, especially if it is based on a
>paradigm that will be unfamiliar to most programmers (ie functional
>programming). I suspect that it may be impossible if you charge hundreds of
>dollars for the basic functionality in /Command.
Here is an interesting dilemma. While opening up /Command to the free world would certainly
cause a proliferation of library integration, would it promote REBOL? I would prefer
to see most solutions be native to REBOL with the integration of libraries reserved for
implementation necessities. Do we want REBOLutionaries spending their time integrating
libraries, or writing native REBOL code? This may be an answer that changes later down
the REBOL timeline.
>Rebol is up against powerful, free environments like Perl / Python / PHP /
>Ruby / Dylan / Lisp / Scheme / Guile etc etc. Most are Open Source. Rebol >is nice,
but the source is closed and by charging for the basics it is entering
>the market with a huge handicap, right from the start.
How much money have the developers of Perl / Python / PHP / Ruby / Dylan / Lisp / Scheme
/ Guile etc etc. made from the language they created? Could some of the shortcomings
of these environments be due to the fact that they are free. Why has JAVA succeeded
in making Sun billions, many times more that all the other languages combined. The key
is to make something everyone must have, and need REBOL to have it. This is a tremendous
opportunity for those of us that understand REBOL.
>So far as I can see, commercial success in the software industry is all
>about achieving a critical mass of users and generating Java style buzz. If
>I were Carl and his backers, I would be giving away the full versions of
>/Command, /View and the application wrapper, to get momentum going.
Interesting that you choose to drop the name "JAVA" here. It is not a free environment,
but Sun doesn't make all their money from Java either. This is an interesting fact that
needs to be considered at RT.
>I appreciate that this would take commercial courage, but in the medium term
>I think it would be much the safest strategy. With a large and vibrant
>community the future of Rebol would be assured, and they could be >generating much greater
revenues from selling advanced servers and >applications, specialised libraries, an integrated
IDE, and consultancy than >they will ever generate selling /Core to a tiny community.
With their current
>approach, they may well be going up the same dead end as all the closed >4GL languages
that were supposed to revolutionise the industry (remember >them, anyone?).
I do remember them, and they didn't impress me anywhere near as much as REBOL does.
They died because the weren't "better enough," so nobody created a must-have application.
Why should REBOL put themselves in the position of competing against their own developers?
This would not encourage top professional developers to adopt the language. It will
take a new company creating a killer ap, or a large company adopting REBOL solutions
as an integral part of their business for REBOL to become a serious money maker. Rather
than looking a languages and their proliferation, we should be looking at companies,
AOL, Oracle, Sun, Microsoft all companies that leveraged software to make powerful companies.
Someone will make a business model that works, or REBOL will become a gift for helping
people do their jobs, but not viable for making serious money.
>And there would be a second, very major advantage. By charging for the >C/C++ API they
are creating a major disincentive for the community to >integrate Rebol with external
libraries. Much of the success of PHP, for >example, can be attributed to its APIs to
external libraries - almost 2000 >internet related functions available at the last count.
I have an idea for an >Open Source project, but it would require /Core to run and this
just does not >sit well with the Free Software ethos. If Rebol is to achieve a critical
mass of
>APIs and library code, Carl must somehow harness the energies of the Rebol
>community. Compare what is available in Perl or PHP with the Rebol code
>repositories and you will see the nature of the problem...
There are two kinds of critical masses. A critical mass of users makes a language proliferate.
A critical mass of money makes a company succeed. Which has made a bigger difference
in the technical world, Oracle, AOL, Microsoft, Sun, etc., or Linux, C++, Lisp, Perl,
PHP, etc.
>What do people think?
The last time Carl created something, it became the engine that ran the Amiga. It also
created completely new markets, multimedia, desktop video, kiosks and many other imbedded
markets. REBOL has the potential to do the same thing. The technology needs to stay
in the hands of the person who understands it, Carl. We need to help, and making it
free doesn't help.
>Geoff Kaplan
Scot Sutherland
[12/15] from: geoff:productivity at: 21-May-2001 22:50
Hi folks
Some very interesting comments from Scot::
> I see libraries and API's as an old paradigm, that tends to promote bloat,
and unwelcome
> divergence. So much can be done currently with REBOL's tremendous
capacity to quickly create
> high levels of abstractions. Maybe a better paradigm would be the
proliferation of dialects.
I only partially agree - APIs to data stores, functions for working with
.pdf files etc etc ... there is simply no substitute for a comprehensive
library. This is surely why Perl is so widely used, despite its many
failings. Provided Carl provides a decent library management mechanism
(Present in Perl, missing from PHP and, at present from Rebol) this need not
lead to bloat. After all, we are only talking server side here - it would
defeat the purpose to bloat the client side.
> The key is to make something everyone must have, and need REBOL to have
it.
> Rather than looking a languages and their proliferation, we should be
looking at companies, AOL,
> Oracle, Sun, Microsoft all companies that leveraged software to make
powerful companies.
This is an interesting perspective. Of course the key in each of these cases
is that they identified and met a real and present need (simplicity,
reliability, a usable platform for technical computing and standardisation
respectively, I would suggest).
But I can't think of any company that made serious $$ selling a language -
the big boys sell products that solve problems for their customers. The
problem at RI is that the language isn't really finished, and they have a
compelling need to generate income. I understand that. But in the longer
run, they will have to make their $$ out of selling solutions built in or
for Rebol, not out of Rebol itself.
If there is a wave coming for distibuted computing, Rebol is in a great
position to catch it. If not, the argument for Rebol won't be compelling
enough.
> The technology needs to stay in the hands of the person who understands
it, Carl.
I don't think that any sane person would dispute that - great languages are
created by personal vision, not by committees.
But resources are clearly thin at RI - I suspect that it will be touch and
go. For a very small player like myself, it is a question of balancing the
potential rewards with the risk of RI going down and taking me with it.
Thanks for the comments - very thought provoking
Geoff Caplan
[13/15] from: ssutherl:westmont at: 20-May-2001 17:21
Hi Geoff,
I don't post to this list very often, but I
thought you brought up the most critical of
discussions. Maybe we should issue a challenge to
the REBOL community.
1. ENSURE THE FUTURE OF REBOL AND DISTRIBUTED
COMPUTING AND CREATE THE KILLER BUSINESS MODEL.
2. CREATE THE DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING WAVE OF THE
FUTURE.
Amiga did not wait around to catch the multimedia
wave, it created it!
Scot M. Sutherland
Geoff Caplan wrote:
[14/15] from: ssutherl:westmont at: 20-May-2001 17:27
I REBOL cross-platform? Or does it run on a new
platform...the internet? It depends upon how you
look at it.
Scot M. Sutherland
bm wrote:
[15/15] from: agem:crosswinds at: 22-May-2001 2:12
See, somewhere i read, Carl made rebol reality after
he had to fight with all this special config-dialects
while installing linux.
Thinking a common base for all with special dialects
would be good.
hm.
anyone knows suse-linux/yast?
Suse had a similar idea.
They realized it by making their own config-files.
Which are then translated/inserted/.. to this
specialist-stuff-files.
Made them able to config linux by setting some variables
from gui-tools.
Sounds a lot like translating between dialects,
meta-programming and so on?
Rebols strenghts.
Maybe working with / making some linux-distro
would be a business?
Could be the easiest manageable out there?
Money?
I think suse can pay >100 employees?
Volker
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Ursprüngliche Nachricht <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Am 21.05.01, 01:21:13, schrieb "Scot M. Sutherland"
<[ssutherl--westmont--edu]> zum Thema [REBOL] Re: The future of Rebol -
achieving critical mass: