Re: Reasons *not* to open source WebObjects?

Hi Georg,

 From what I can see, there are two different camps at work here: 
consultants (programmers for hire -- either alone or as a company) and 
internal developers. For the consultants, perhaps the way WO handled by 
Appleis ok and it does indeed give folks like you a competitive 
advantage.

For internal developers, Apple's lack of marketing of WO is a disaster. 
I am the only WO developer on the entire UC Berkeley campus and it does 
not do any good for our community as a whole -- either from the 
standpoint of me working alone on applications or the standpoint of the 
rest of the community hacking away at overly complex JSP/J2EE/etc. 
applications. And it is not from a lack of trying -- I have given 
presentations of the technology and evangelized it as much as I can, 
and no one wants to listen. Why? Because they had never heard about it 
before I mentioned it and they'll never hear about it again once I stop 
mentioning it them every chance I get. And universities care very much 
about the technology, not just the solution.

Most programmers grow up in universities and yet I can't get anyone 
here to even look at WO. I'm not a marketer, so I don't know what it 
takes. But it strikes me as pretty odd that Apple is hammering away at 
high-end computing and bioinformatics in higher ed and yet never 
mentions one of the greatest programming frameworks ever created.

Honestly, if Linux were as known as WO, do you think it would be 
hosting Oracle databases in datacenters? Great technologies don't 
market themselves. If you don't believe that, just ask the Apple 
engineers who used to work at Be Inc. Thankfully, some of the genius 
that went into the BeOS is making its way into Tiger. But I bet you've 
heard more about Spotlight in the press in the past year (a technology 
that isn't even out yet) far more than you've ever hear about WO.

Sorry, but as a member of a greater community, I don't want great 
technologies to be used as secret weapons to outdo the competition. I 
want them to be used for the betterment of the community.

-lucas

On Mar 31, 2005, at 9:57 AM, Georg Tuparev wrote:

> Small world. Almost parallel discussion is going on on the wocoa 
> mailing list. So I will just copy and paste what I wrote there, and of 
> course apologize to those who are on both lists...
>
> On Mar 31, 2005, at 3:30 AM, Denis Stanton wrote:
>
>> I was considering responding to Cliff's post, but I couldn't come up 
>> with a polite and constructive way of saying that while Apple may 
>> offer a consultancy service they do not appear to be a serious 
>> player.  Pitching WebObjects to senior management is always futile 
>> because the decision makers won't buy something they haven't heard of 
>> already and WebObjects is effectively invisible (or should that be 
>> inaudible?).  The secrecy model that generates so much buzz in the 
>> consumer electronics world is totally inappropriate to the market 
>> where WebObjects could be sold.  Business managers abhor secrecy and 
>> uncertainty from suppliers and can't be expected to risk their jobs 
>> on a product that has no future.
>
> To similar claim I answered:
> "Almost every time I go to WoCoa or any other WO related gathering I 
> meet people complaining about this very subject. This is plainly 
> untrue!
>
> Why a hell anyone should sell technologies? Who gives a sh..t about if 
> one uses Wo, Java, whatever! People need solutions, not technologies. 
> We run a quarter of all dutch credit card statements, and have top 
> international banks and mobile operators as our clients, and even 
> government organizations (NL, Germany, UK, and US). No one asked about 
> technology for the last 3-4 years. The times where smart-ass CTOs were 
> checking the solution for compliance with every buzzword are over 
> (luckily). People need to make money with our software, and we need to 
> write our software fast in order to make money too. WO fits in this 
> picture very nicely, and we all should stop complaining and do 
> something more useful."
>
> Being a WO developers makes my team more competitive compared to our 
> competition. Luckily so few of our competitors know about WO. 
> Otherwise we could never keep up with the big boys :-) Many of our 
> clients think we do wonders... we just do some very boring WO :-)
>
> Georg Tuparev
> Tuparev Technologies
> Klipper 13
> 1186 VR Amstelveen
> The Netherlands
> Mobile: +31-6-55798196
>
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