Andrew's ramblings

Open Source and an Adobe Employee's perspective

Tags: Coldfusion

I only just came across this post today, and it is a fairly lengthy post. However there seems to be more bitterness between to the two companies (Adobe and New Atlanta), that really did not need to be mentioned.

I for one welcome the fact that Bluedragon J2EE is going to be open sourced, and I make no apologies for being vocal about its benefits either.

The following post is by Adam Lehman (Adobe).

Open Source Could Be Last Hope For BlueDragon

Now the question is that it might be seen as a last ditch by New Atlanta, however some of us more experienced developers are welcoming the move as well as an opportunity to enter an area that has made it very difficult for Coldfusion to migrate into.

First let me also say this, there is a lot of stuff that this post goes into. And the one thing that I will not argue with, is the fact how feature rich ColdFusion actually is.

So now lets look at the competition, and why they are very successful in the market that they are in.

Java: This is a core framework for developers to build an application from, and is not feature rich nor does it need to be either.

.Net: As with Java this framework is again for developers to create an application, and itself is not feature rich.

I won't go into others, the point I am trying to make is this. Do we as a developer really care that we can purchase an Application that is full of rich features, that we may never use?

I would like to say that the benefits is that yes one day, we may need to and we may never need to either.

So how do I see Adobe's future, well with a feature rich Application like ColdFusion the market is aimed at a very small niche market that is not really growing that much. Sure web developers of websites would love to be able to have all these features, or an intranet may or may not utilize all these features.

But what about serious Enterprise applications that are in need of integration into other applications. We are not interested in that feature richness. What we care about is that we can utilize other open source applications, to a a backend tier that is not hindered by a pricing model that we think we will never use.

I have been very vocal that the CFML engine could be adopted into the open source market, and the richness that Adobe or who ever else wants to adapt into the engine can the modulise this as separate plugins to the engine.

Think about that for a minute or two, that means that I will only ever pay for what I need. Adobe may not like that idea but the reality is that our company as an Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 company, really care about adopting tools / applications that can work together and efficiently.

And I am sorry to say that ColdFusion in a closed form, and not open source doesn't give us that extra movement.

As I stated, nobody can argue how feature rich ColdFusion actually is. What we can argue, is that the more features and richness goes into the product as a closed application, means that the Application is moving further and further away from more Enterprise developers. Sure as Adam states, they are picking up some more developers via the fact it has flex and the likes integrated. But the reality is this is not a market Adobe should only focus on any more, and I strongly believe that if Adobe adopt the attitude of looking outside that market they will become a more serious player in the market as well.