CFML and open source

Tags: OpenBD, Railo

Well one of the things that I was hoping for, could become a very big reality now. At the time I write this, it is not 100% confirmed. but it appears that railo is now going open source. So what does this mean?

Put pure and simple, it puts more pressure on to Adobe to open source the CFML engine. Now that there are 3 open source engines, and in time they will all have a following. And this is what I would have liked to have seen, and I guess I am grateful that the forsight I looked at is now happening.

So what does Adobe do now? This is going to be interesting times ahead, because now that there are 3 it shows that there is a market that I anticipated that there would be. But if Adobe don't act soon, I think we will have seen the end of their dominance as leader of the CFML engine.

Why is that, well it is going to be a case of. If we don't keep up with the Jone's then we are not going to be competative.

So as I stated once before, Adobe needs to consider open source and change the business module to incorporate the pluginsd approach in one of my previous posts.

All I can say now is that the CFML engine is about to take on a complete new meaning, now it is going to boild down to which CFML engine will win in the open source market. And who will initiate the merging of these engines.

One would expect that Adobe would be the one to do this, but it is going to be interesting to see if they are smart enough to do this.

I suspect that Coldfusion 9 will be released, not as open source though.

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  • Anon's Gravatar Personally, I see it as a sign of them giving up. Much like BlueDragon. They couldn't make any money with it, it was going down the drain, so they used the "open source" outlet to get rid of it. They just throw it out there, and let other people work on it for them. If it succeeds, it still has their name on it. If it fails it's not their fault because they're no longer responsible for the product. It's a win/win situation for BlueDragon, and an elegant way for them to save face and look good in the community while abandoning ship.

    I would imaging that Railo has decided it BlueDragon is hitting the road, they probably should to.
    # Posted By Anon | 6/5/08 9:15 AM
  • Andrew Scott's Gravatar Anon, there would have been a time I would have agreed with you.

    The problem is that openBD is gaining momentum, railo would have been keeping a close eye on them. And to be honest, I would say that their engine is far superior and they think so too.

    Open source takes a fair knowledge of a lot of things. The direction of open source is gaining more ground than ever before, companies that have never been in that area are having to adjust to survive.

    Railo would know this, and taken that big evangalists in Coldfusion have become involved in openBD has to say more than profit.

    I have always stuck by the open CFML engine, and towards a business model that enables value for money.

    What that means is this, it now enables anyone to write a CFML engine. But it is going to come down to this. How interchangable is everything going to be?

    Which is why I am now asking who will be the winner, but at the moment it will not be Adobe unless they announce open source CFML engine.

    Lets wait and see what happens.
    # Posted By Andrew Scott | 6/5/08 9:39 AM
  • CF Fan Boy's Gravatar From what I can tell, the only momentum open blue dragon has so far is from a small minority of vocal bloggers. Show me where it's being used in the real world. How many fortune 1000 companies are dropping Adobe for open BD. How many government agencies? I'm sure that open blue dragon will pick up a following, but I doubt it will be as large and revolutionary as you think it will.

    Ralio, is another story. Hooking up with JBoss was smart and has the potential to carry them much further. I still don't see it as the end of a commercial offering from Adobe - just one more option. Heck, by your logic, IBM should have open sourced WebSphere when other J2EE app servers went open source. But they didn't, and they still sell a heck of a lot of websphere licenses.
    # Posted By CF Fan Boy | 6/5/08 11:24 AM
  • Andrew Scott's Gravatar CF Fan Boy, it isn't that simple either.

    You need to take a few things into consideration, and at the moment Adobe do not have a strong foot hold in the enterprise market.

    open source the CFML engine will and let me say that again. Will change the enterprise situation.

    Railo choosing JBoss, yeah I can see that as a major plus to them. But not a major decision for those of us who would like to use the open sourced CFML in our projects, as we have already got our Application Server.

    But to introduce us more into an Enterprise world, thumbs up for the move.
    # Posted By Andrew Scott | 6/5/08 6:35 PM

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