Re: Open source WO - offer

Hear, hear.  I think Jerry has laid out my thinking on this rather well.

Also, let's look at the announcements we have had recently:
- WO goes OS X only
- community voices strong objections
- WO gains full deployment freedom again
- WO development tools are deprecated, with no intention to replace them

What I see in this sequence of events is that Apple knew the Cocoa- 
Java bridge was going away and wanted to write replacement tools in  
Cocoa, which would have required the move to supporting OS X only.   
When the wailing and gnashing of teeth turned out to be louder than  
they expected, they had to move on to Plan B.  I think what is  
happening here is that they will assist and encourage alternate tools  
like WOlips, which will be multi-platform.  After that they can write  
their Cocoa-only tools without looking like they are abandoning  
anyone, although if we do our job well they might not even need to.

Only guessing.. but it makes sense to me.

janine

On Aug 25, 2006, at 5:29 AM, Jerry W. Walker wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WebObjects-talk mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/webobjects-talk