Abandonware, or 'Allaire Forums Open Sourced'

xtra sends news that Allaire has "open sourced" its Forums software (web-based threaded discussion groups). You can either rush off to check it out or read a bit of commentary below about abandoned software.

For those who don't know, Forums is a package of Cold Fusion templates which runs on a web server with Cold Fusion installed. You can see an example of it at forums.allaire.com.

I've been using Cold Fusion for a few years now, and my initial reaction was, "Why bother?" Allaire released the initial version of Forums in 1996, supported it for about 20 minutes or so[1], and began the process of abandoning it in favor of developing a lucrative "enterprise computing" package. Around 1998 or so, perhaps even 1997, people started asking for it to be open-sourced. In 1998 Allaire made a few bug fixes and released version 2 of the software, and in November 1999, they announced the software would be open-sourced. And yesterday, they actually did it. Of course, all of their Forums customers decided they were abandoned a few years ago, and found another product.

Now in one sense, Forums has always been "open source". Cold Fusion templates are interpreted, not compiled (and Forums was released before Allaire added even the weak encryption for templates that they now support), so anyone with a few weeks to kill could scrutinize the code and figure out how everything worked. Of course, redistributing modified versions of the code was a no-no, and if you made any modifications to it, even bug-fixes, then you lost all support from Allaire. Just like any compiled software product. In fact, I believe changing the templates was against the old license agreement, though I don't have a copy of the old license readily available.

So basically what they've done is make it freely downloadable. The license agreement is one of those bastardized we-took-our-standard-license-and-changed-a-few-words things that very obviously originated in the mind of a lawyer used to writing proprietary software licenses. I suppose it's open, but it sure isn't friendly about being open, know what I mean? It giveth with one hand, and taketh away with the other.

In any case, this is a classical example of the "abandoning a product while trying to keep our customers from feeling abandoned" open-source motivation. I'm dubious about its success, in this case or in the other cases where this is the motivation behind opening up a set of code. If Allaire had actually done this maybe three years ago, Forums would probably be a robust and stable product by now, and it would probably be driving a fair number of sales of the Cold Fusion application server. Instead, Allaire collected ($400 * #number_of_sales#) and pissed off (0.95 * #number_of_forums_customers#) by selling them a product with zero support.

Are people really going to flock to it now, spend a few hours parsing the license and trying to figure out if they can do anything useful with the code, and spontaneously develop a thriving user-group to support this thing? If Allaire can't even support it, why do they expect others to?

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll be a huge success, it'll turn into a beautiful open-source product and every Cold Fusion site worldwide will want their own set of discussion groups. Or maybe it'll just turn into another ghost site, lights on, but nobody home.

The open source/free software community is likely to see a lot more of these sorts of projects in the future. When your car gets old and feeble, and you don't feel like fixing it up anymore, you can donate it to Goodwill or to your local school for their auto shop course. Or you just take the plates off and drive it down to the waterfront, roll down the windows, leave the keys in it, and walk away.

When you don't feel like supporting your old software anymore, you dub it "open source", send out a press release touting your bold move, and dump it in the software burial grounds. It's a little better than previous burial methods (which involving interring the software in Yucca Mountain, permanent disposal), but maybe not very much.

Now Emmett is a little more optimistic. He notes that if even one person does something useful with the code, it's a net gain. And I suppose he's right. But the community is going to have to learn how to deal with "open source" code that is actually just a cynical move to dump some unsupported product and talk about how you're supporting the open source world.

Emmett: I agree with you, but there's always the point that someone will probably find a good use for it, even if it's to test it once and throw it away. OOP means that talented developers are talented in the reuse of code. I mean, if only one person picks it apart, takes 200 lines of code, and uses it to build some better, more efficient system of some sort, and GPL all of it, isn't that worth it? I think so, and I think it's the 'one person, somewhere' belief that keeps everything going. If they were serious about doing something, they would have used the GPL and been done with it.

The key here is that Allaire isn't thinking 'one person, somewhere,' they're thinking, 'good PR,' while they'll turn this into a PR extravaganza and say they're thinking 'one person, somewhere.' I think we're on the same page when I say we're both thinking 'too little, too late.' Don't confuse clever marketing and free advertising for innovation.

[1] A slight exaggeration. I believe Allaire actually supported the product for at least a week after they rolled it out.

Comments

This is not a Bad Thing

[AshPattern]

Frankly, I'd say it was a overall Great Thing, at least if it catches on. After all, what are the primary methods of learning how to program, gaining the tricks and techniques of the trade?

• Take a class in it, which will teach you syntax and not much else
• Figure it out yourself from the techniques you already know and the documentation you have
• (this is the big one) Learning how someone else did it

Way back when I was a wee tyke, when I was first getting the hang of Pascal, I would have given my left kidney to access the wealth of open source code today. Not because it's a free product, but because I could have learned things like fast hash functions and various optimizations without having to munge through the concepts myself. Something may be gained from the experience, I suppose, but the pain is considerably more than the gain.

If software companies want to abandon software by making it open source, then scores of programmers in their crysalis stage are going to benefit. The customers were screwed already from the companies poor support policies, so they don't even enter into the equation.

With an eye to the future, I'd say that anything that will help people become programmers is a worthwhile endeavor. Isn't that what the geek community is about?

Now if they would just do that to Cold Fusion

[Black Art]

I currently use Cold Fusion at work. I may not have to for long. For months I tried to convince my boss that Linux and PHP was a much better solution than Solaris and Cold Fusion. (And *much* more cost effective.)

Then I installed RedHat 6.2 on his Sparc 2.

He has changed his mind.

Now that he has seen what it can do on his home machine, he is more than impressed. PHP runs rings are ound Cold Fusion when it comes to features and timeliness of updates. I am *still* waiting for our 4.5.1 bug fix release for Solaris. I will probably have to call them and scream until I am blue in the face to get it, even though we have a paid subscription for the software.

Linux and PHP are just a better choice all around.

Incorrect URL in story

[Listerine]

The Correct URL is http://www.forumspot.org

Abandonware?

[Signal 11]

First, cute name - I like it. Second, open source to businesses is still largely a PR stunt. Witness Sun's foray into it, or Apple's - both had absolutely atrocious licensing under the "open source" banner... both were (largely) resolved after community outcry and some work by our esteemed Bruce Perens, but many other companies have not been subjected to that level of scrutiny.

Most businesses still cannot (and will continue to for some time) grasp the basic idea of giving something away. In their world, if you give something away, you earn no money in return. This is true. They also presume support will continue to derive the same income, as the number of users hasn't increased much over a period of N. Hence, the logical conclusion is that without that source of revenue, they need to cut back expenditures to survive. Not very optimal - they lose profits. The flipside that they don't realize is that by open sourcing something, you can decrease your maintenance costs and increase your user base (if properly executed).

Companies don't see the long-term benefit. And, to be honest, open source is risky - there is no guarantee of high market penetration, as always.. and companies do NOT like risk, especially an unknown one - and there is unsufficient data right now to make a long-term commitment for many companies.

I know everyone is now shouting "FUD! FUD!" but this is how companies think, so you'd better warm up to the idea. Open source developers for the most part aren't getting rich - Microsoft developers are. That's a pretty powerful statement. So, if you want companies to open source a live product, instead of one that is no longer generating revenue (at which point it doesn't matter much what happens to the software, so the decision to go open source is easier) maybe we should concentrate on producing some hard numbers on companies that have taken the plunge.. and what happened 5 years later.

Re:Didn't the same thing happen with Interbase?

[JohnZed]

Well, with Interbase, it COULD have ended up as "abandonware," as it had been pushed pretty far down on the priorities list at Inprise. Now, however, it's anything but. Inprise has formed a spin-off company (along with some VC money) to support and develop it further. Now Interbase is getting the publicity, development support, and openness that it needed all along. Version 6 should be a huge improvement, especially on Linux (which is now a primary development platform, rather than an afterthought).

--JRZ