Re: Open source WO - offer

Hi, Marc,

I think this has become a long and largely fruitless thread, but I'll  
contribute a single idea to it.

On Aug 25, 2006, at 1:15 AM, Marc Oesch wrote:

>> Where is the return on investment with WO for Apple today ?

If Apple is to remain a viable company, and they've done so under  
some extreme circumstances over the last five years, then this can't  
be the question they must concentrate their resources on. The real  
question, and the one they've answered very well several times, is:

   Where is the return on investment (with WO or any other  
technology) for Apple tomorrow?

Given this question, I think Apple has made the right decision for  
Apple. They will continue to make money on the Mac platform, but much  
more so in the consumer space than in the commercial space. I don't  
think that they can expect any ROI on making WO any better as a  
product, either from the consumer or from the enterprise. They've  
been there, done that.

So what are the new IT revenue streams? Web services.

The big fight today is who is going to dominate in a world where your  
desktop/laptop machine is nearly irrelevant and you're investing your  
time, interest and money in services over the web?

Google is making major moves in this area and their progress has not  
gone unnoticed by such as Apple and Microsoft. Apple has been no  
slouch here either, with their revolutionary iTunes Music Store. With  
this one product/service, they've turned the music business on its head.

Though the Apple store is hardly revolutionary, they've invested a  
lot in making it a paradigm of web based sales. They're doing it well.

I think they see that developing these web services will gain them a  
much greater ROI than any investment they could make, right now, in  
WebObjects, given its maturity, its stability and its remaining  
relative advantage to other web application platforms. I think they  
no longer view it as a strategic product, they haven't for a long  
time. However, I think they do view it (in fact they've said as much)  
as a strategic tool.

In other words, they're not about to give it up, but no more are they  
about to invest incredible resources in its improvement, despite  
continual clamoring from the WO "community" to do so. So what to do?

I think they've done it. Recognize that open source tools for  
developing WO applications (Eclipse/WOLips, etc.) are already as good  
as, or better than some of the tools that Apple provides. It's hard  
not to recognize this when their own people are using some of these  
tools.

So turn over the tool development to the community and retain the  
crown jewels, the frameworks. They're extensible in ways that most of  
the competition is not. They're stable, mature and already very good.  
And by giving the responsibility for the tools, and extensions to us,  
perhaps the "community" will become a community.

They're not so stupid. It's happening. Why should they give up the  
crown jewels?  Because you want them to?

Maybe they're developing an internal set of Cocoa only tools for WO  
development. They've got some very talented Cocoa programmers who  
could do that. Perhaps if/when those tools are good enough, they  
might market them outside Apple, maybe not. What better way to  
motivate employees who might be working on such internal tools than  
to level the playing field for competition from outside in the open  
source community?

If they're doing so, they're doing it without the pressures from  
customers who would insist that the tools have to be compatible  
across platforms, that they have to be Java, that they have to be  
guaranteed, that they have to accommodate some rich customer's  
special environment. All they would have to focus on is that they  
meet the needs of their own internal developers, a bright group of  
people who work on a single platform.

Who knows, they might even be moving back to an improved version of  
WO 4.5 in Objective C. It's possible if they believe that they could  
create a better set of web services faster than the competition using  
that approach. Wouldn't that be a hoot to see Apple introduce WO 7.0  
as an Objective C/Cocoa only web services development stack? Of  
course, it would be built on the new Objective C and would  
incorporate only the improvements from WO 5.x and, perhaps, WO 6.x,  
rather than all the Java accommodations they entailed.

Finally, regarding ROI, though I don't know this to be true, I have  
to believe that Apple has some very bright people, trained in finance  
and corporate economics, spending large amounts of their professional  
time exploring the ROI of various opportunities and strategies.  
Unlike us, however, their focus would be on what's really good for  
Apple, not what's good for the WO community.

Regards,
Jerry

--
__ Jerry W. Walker,
    WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial  
Strength Internet Enabled Systems

     [email protected]
     203 278-4085        office