Re: Open source WO (was: Apple, Microsoft, Java and the Web?)

On Aug 23, 2006, at 10:46 PM, Marc Oesch wrote:

> Please let me know more in case I miss something here, thanks.

All I can say is that Apple has made it very clear it won't happen.  
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, only that it's not worth spending our  
energy on unless they change their mind (minds?).

Also, as I said a few days ago in the context of a GVC Sitemaker  
discussion, it's a very risky thing for a company to open-source a  
product they depend on themselves.  They have to have resources  
available to monitor and control what happens to that source;  they  
have to maintain a high level of quality and keep things moving in a  
direction that is compatible with their own needs.  So it's not like  
Apple can toss the source out and reap the rewards;  it's a fairly  
substantial investment in their own time (and therefore money) to do  
this.  And there's a catch-22 here - right now the group of people  
who would contribute is small, so it's not really worth their while  
to do it.  But the community isn't likely to grow larger unless they  
do it.

IMHO, as I said before, we should put our energies into making the WO  
add-ons like Wonder as compelling as they can possibly be, and grow  
the community ourselves.  If there is any chance at all that Apple is  
ever going to open source WO, it's only going to happen if there is a  
large enough community to make it worthwhile.

> There is an alternative  I didn't mention to be successful without
> going open-source:  Apple now indeed works on a major, innovative WO
> 5.x or 6.0 release.

I actually think this is somewhat more likely.  WO is free as in  
beer, for sure, but they are also using it internally.  So whether or  
not this happens will depend mostly on whether the engineers inside  
Apple feel the need for more features. I don't know if that is the  
case or not, but it seems reasonable to think it could happen.  It'll  
just be on their schedule, not on ours.

Just to be clear, I would be thrilled if they open sourced it.  I  
just haven't seen any flying pigs lately...

janine