Re: Is WebObjects moving away from Windows development platform?

On Jun 19, 2006, at 9:32 PM, Cheong Hee (QSS) wrote:

> I have just visited the Apple WebObjects website as I am preparing  
> some
> costing for deployment.  To my surprise, there isn't any pricing  
> tag for
> WebObjects.  As usual, it has a tag price with MAC OSX (which it is  
> given
> away as a package deal for the MAC platform).
>
> I probably missed any news release about this matter.  Has anyone  
> had any
> idea about the development support for Windows (for future  
> release)?  Has
> anyone recently made purchase and develop in Windows?
>
> Currently, I am using latest WO5.2.4.  However, if there is no future
> support for this platform, be it license or pricing, it will be a  
> big blow
> to get developers who are using Windows as a platform for many  
> reasons.
>
> Appreciate anyone's update.

  I would say Apple's logic is as follows:

    Supporting the developer tools on Windows was getting to be a  
hassle because they're actually cocoa apps. So they have always had  
to back-port a bunch of stuff to 5 different Windows platforms.  But  
technically, anything with a java compiler can be a WO development  
platform, its just a matter of how integrated everything is.

    Eclipse+WOLips is better than the existing WO dev tools  
especially on Windows, given that WO is java already. Many WO  
developers already use Eclipse on MacOSX.

    WO is a high-end developer tool, which means you have high-end  
engineers who are perfectly capable of supporting WO on other  
platforms, Apple definitely talks about WO being 100% Java, and  
that's definitely a design goal for WO. There are plenty of open- 
source web application frameworks that don't "support" Windows,  
contributers have just gotten it to run under windows. So in the web  
framework market, I think there's a clear difference between

   Add those all together and you get:

     1. If you want to develop on Windows, there's nothing stopping  
you, but Apple doesn't want to provide technical support for you.  
Guess what? The Rails guys don't provide tech support at all! So what  
have you lost exactly?

     2. If you want to deploy WO, MacOSX is the path of least  
resistance (and we've found that XServes give pretty good bang/buck).  
But people can and do use a number of other Java deployment options,  
and they're supported much like they are in other web frameworks:  
You're on your own, except for the mailing lists.

     3. Apple is committed to 100% pure Java for WO.

    So I would say that using WO on Windows is like using Rails on  
Windows: MacOSX is easier, but you can do it if you like.

Pierce


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