Re: Reasons *not* to open source WebObjects?

At 9:37 AM +0800 3/31/05, Ashley Aitken wrote:
>No disregard to Tapestry and Cayenne - I have a lot of respect for 
>these projects and their developers - but I would assume that WO is 
>considerably more mature and extensive than either product 
>separately or combined.

I'd declare them "different" to be honest... not any more or less 
mature than WO.

WO is time tested, to be sure.  However, it's also undergone major 
changes.  The WO of 1998 is not the WO of today.  It also uses a lot 
of non-standard practices for Java... being a purely Java solution 
however.  There's enough difference to make it difficult to compare.

Tapestry, for example, had time to learn from WO and do it better. 
OGNL is a good case in point <http://www.ognl.org/>.  This came out 
of Apple's KVC... but is better.  It's more expressive.  This is an 
area has not embraced or improved, but the OS community has! 
Tapestry takes full advantage of it.

So, the products are different.... and "maturity" (meaning time of 
life), might mean little in this comparison if the products in 
question have had time to "improve" upon original design.

>   That is not to say that each project has not made improvements on 
>WO in particular areas.

But that's what makes them different.

>I think open source WO would be very attractive.

That's a nice statement, but lacks the supporting premises to support 
the conclusion, in my opinion.

>I wasn't assuming that Apple would just dump WI on the open source 
>community and walk away.  As they have a significant interest in its 
>use (iTMS, Apple Store) I believe they would contribute developers 
>and probably even maintain the project.  Of course, others are free 
>to fork or branch the project, but it would be better to work to 
>integrate with Apple's version.

I'm not sure how Apple would release such a thing if they proceeded 
with such a plan.  They would be wise to do as you outlined, but who 
knows.

However, even then, if a community does not evolve and allowed the 
ability to modify and change the direction of WO, what's the point of 
OS?

mark

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  Mark F. Murphy, Director Software Development   <mailto:[email protected]>
  Tyrell Software Corp                            <http://www.tyrell.com>
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