You are probably right about your predictions, but ActiveState has to try. Why? Because they have investors.
When you take money from a VC, it's not free. They expect you to place your company on a high-risk/high-reward growth curve. They want a spectacular success or a quick crash and burn.
This is what killed Ars Digita. I hope it doesn't kill ActiveState because I am tired of watching good companies crumble in their attempts to meet the demanding expectations of investors they never needed.
Eventually the CLR will replace Microsoft's platform revenue stream.
Right now they get a nice chunk of money every time somebody buys a PC. Windows is one of the most expensive components of a desktop computer.
If you look far enough down the road, Linux on the desktop is a reality. So they know that the OS monopoly is coming to an end. It is time to start getting a new monopoly ready to take its place.
They will ride this gravy train as long as they can, and then they will concede the OS market and start charging the same per-computer tax for the CLR. They won't care what OS is running underneath it. The OS will become a low-margin commodity, and they may even just starting giving Windows away for free. The profit margins will simply be relocated upward to a higher layer of this new and thicker notion of a platform.
BTW, don't even think about suggesting that Java will win because it was here first. Java is to the CLR as Lotus-1-2-3 was to Excel. Some people innovate. Other people specialize in refinement and broad market penetration.
My CS degree didn't teach me any particular skill that has been practical in my software development career. Nonetheless, as an employer, I continue to use the presence of a solid CS degree on a resume as a good indicator. It correlates very well with the likelihood that the candidate will be an excellent developer. But that doesn't mean that the degree taught that person anything useful about the development of software.
If you want a degree, get it for yourself, not for your career. You'll be a better person when you get done, but not a better programmer.
And BTW, stop saying that you can complete a CS degree in one year. It makes you sound clueless, not clueful.
People here are missing the whole point. Everyone seems to be saying that programmers don't read code because the code is poorly commented. Ridiculous.
Joel is right. Programmers don't read code because they don't like doing it.
Most programmers act like the universe revolves around them, apparently believing that their job should never ask them to do something that isn't fun.
It doesn't matter whether the code is well-commented or not -- it usually needs to be read. The natural tendency to read code is an excellent way to distinguish the best developers from the rest.
You radically overstate the status of the document formerly referred to as HTML 3.0. This was never a standard of any kind. It was Dave Raggett's proposal for a next generation of HTML.
I was chair of the HTML Working Group (IETF) back then, and I was amazed how many people perceived Dave's labeling of that document to be gospel. His document never had any consensus behind it of any kind, and it was not widely implemented. He coded it in his prototype browser, and emacs-w3 implemented it of course, along with every other feature suggested by anyone.:-)
BTW, HTML 3.0 was *not* an attempt to bring sanity to the demented browser implementations. Raggett's document predated the dementia.
After we finished the standardization of HTML 2.0 within the IETF, that Working Group was shut down, and I joined the W3C group, to help with the standardization of HTML 3.2. Yes, it was unfortunate that the effort moved into an organization which was open only to corporate members. However, there was a very substantial need to get the major browser vendors to agree on *something*, and that process was clearly just not going to happen in IETF meetings.
By this point, HTML 3.0 was old news. Not even Raggett was pushing it anymore. It was a nice doc, and way ahead of its time, but it should have been titled something a bit less pretentious.
The AbiWord project is truly a Bazaar. In fact, they have refined some very explicit practices which are designed to help lower the barriers, allowing new contributors to join up.
Re:QT is the best gui toolkit out there
on
Qt for Mac
·
· Score: 1
This is an interesting perspective, and it is the first time I have seen such a concise assertion that the wrapper toolkits are inferior to the have-their-own-widgets variety.
My problem with kits like Gtk and Qt, which provide their own substitutes for all the system native widgets, is that the resulting app never feel native. Some of the kits seem to do an astonishing job, but the resulting apps are still not quite right. Dogs bark at them, and children are not fooled.
--
Eric W. Sink
Language advocacy is an instance of a class of problems. Viewed in the aggregate, the various kinds of technology advocacy simply make it harder for us as an industry to use technology toward the solution of the problems of normal people.
This is Slashdot. We are self-professed "Nerds". One of my definitions of a nerd is someone who thinks that technology is interesting. Normal people aren't like that. They desperately want technology to be boring.
I wrote this article a few months ago, but it might be of interest to the readers of this thread. Enjoy!
I spent a little bit of time, a long time ago, trying to figure out which GUI layer they used. Eventually, I found a mention of Bristol in some PostScript generated by StarWord. Perhaps they only used Bristol for the printer driver layer?
Any effort I have ever invested in advocacy for Open Source was certainly not motivated by a desire to avoid duplication of effort on any sort of a wide scale.
AbiWord is not my business. AbiWord is a community project founded by and sponsored by SourceGear. It is not, and has never been, a revenue center for our company.
I'm sure it felt very bold from the perspective of the people at Sun making the decision.
I rather doubt that Sun can turn StarOffice into a profit center of its own, regardless of what kind of license they use. From that perspective, they didn't risk much, so not much courage was required.
Still, it's hard to overstate the level of inertia inside companies that are as old and large as Sun. (Yes, I know that in the context of the market as a whole, Sun is terribly young and small, but we're talking about tech companies here). I'm certain that someone made this decision over a substantial amount of internal opposition.
I am excerpting this from a message I sent to the abiword-dev mailing list.
I have speculated for a long time about what might happen if someone decided to take an existing, mature office suite and make it truly Open Source.
I haven't exactly been sitting on the edge of my seat. It has seemed likely that someone would do it eventually, but the event has just never seemed very imminent. It's clear that Microsoft, with 95% market share and over 10B annual revenues, has no incentive to make their suite Open Source. Corel has far too little clue, and IBM/Lotus have far too much.
The only glimmer of hope has been Sun, which seems to have a practice of being smart during the even-numbered years and downright silly during the odd-numbered ones.
An Open Source version of StarOffice would open up a remarkable number of opportunities. In the hope that this rumor is revealed to be true, I would like to applaud all of those people at Sun who contributed to the execution of this bold, visionary decision.
And frankly, I'm insulted that none of those people called me.:-) Granted, I doubt that our little 28-person company is even a blip on their radar screen. However, as founder of the AbiWord project, SourceGear has a lot of experience in the world StarOffice is about to join. In fact, I daresay that there is no one else on earth who knows more about losing money on Open Source office apps than I do.:-)
I think that the response from the Open Source community is an important opportunity, and I would like to offer my unsolicited advice regarding the appropriate tenor of our response:
Let's welcome Sun, not flame them. Trust me folks -- this is a bold move on their part. If you have never been in a position of real accountability for a business, making the decisions which directly affect the lives of your employees and stockholders, then you may not immediately recognize this kind of choice for what it really is. These decisions require great courage. If Sun makes any little mistakes in their launch of StarOffice-GPL, then please try to keep the minor things in their proper perspective.
Let's not gripe about how bad StarOffice is. Yes, I have actually used StarOffice under Linux. Yes, I know the GUI has a look and feel which is very Windowsy. Yes, I know the suite is enormous and bloated. None of that matters.
The point is that Sun is making the only decision which will allow StarOffice to become better. It's never about where you are -- it's about where you are going.
Let's not gripe about how bad StarOffice will be. Yes, it is very likely that the GPL-ed version of StarOffice will be even worse than the app which is currently available. This is because I seriously doubt that they will be able to GPL all of the functionality.
For example, I'm fairly sure that StarOffice is built upon a Win32 compatibility library from Bristol. They can't GPL that. The spell checker is probably not theirs. In fact, most full-featured office suites today are built using a bunch of third-party components. If the first source code tarball from Sun is even buildable, I'll be surprised.
But I won't be complaining about it. Doing so is not going to benefit anyone.
Let's not fret about the potential negative impact to projects like AbiWord or Gnumeric. These projects can go on, and I believe they both will. Does StarOffice use an XML-based format? Is their word importer as good as ours? Is their app integrated with GNOME? Does it fit on a floppy disk?
Even in an Open Source world, there is room for multiple efforts. Many of the people who work on AbiWord or Gnumeric are doing so for the enjoyment or experience. StarOffice will meet different needs, and there is nothing preventing both projects from reaching their goals. In fact, the existence of StarOffice is more likely to benefit AbiWord and Gnumeric than it is likely to cause harm.
Let's not start predicting the death of Microsoft. Stuff like that does little but damage our credibility. Anyone who thinks that Microsoft Office sales are going to plunge toward zero next month simply doesn't get it.
There was a recent published interview with someone from the Kylix team at Borlaprise. This guy gets it. He said things like, "Our success does not require Microsoft's failure", and, "When television came along, radio didn't suddenly go away."
It is possible that this GPL release of StarOffice will eventually cause some impact to the proprietary players. However, we need to speak not in terms of extinction or annihilation, but in terms of reduction of margins.
And we need to give it time before the effects start to be visible. Microsoft's product manager for Office is not scared, and [s]he doesn't need to be.
Let's cross our fingers and hope that the rumor is true.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
The Microsoft deal did not include DiffMerge. It will continue to be free and available from SourceGear.
Are you in contact with our tech support folks? If you're having trouble with our product in any way, we definitely want to help.
http://support.sourcegear.com/viewforum.php?f=5
Wow. I posted a link to an article on my personal weblog. That article does not mention my company name or any of the names of my company's products.
Shameless self promotion? You've gotta be kidding.
http://software.ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html
Voytek writes:
.NET consultant to pay the
.NET, both extensively. .NET is a LOT nicer.
> I don't savor the prospect of having
> to become a
> bills in 3 or 4 years
Why not? I've used Java and
Maybe they should restrict access to the
No, this is a MINOR step in the right direction.
You are probably right about your predictions,
but ActiveState has to try. Why? Because they
have investors.
When you take money from a VC, it's not free.
They expect you to place your company on a
high-risk/high-reward growth curve. They want
a spectacular success or a quick crash and burn.
This is what killed Ars Digita. I hope it
doesn't kill ActiveState because I am tired of
watching good companies crumble in their
attempts to meet the demanding expectations
of investors they never needed.
Eventually the CLR will replace Microsoft's platform revenue stream.
Right now they get a nice chunk of money every time somebody buys a PC. Windows is one of the most expensive components of a desktop computer.
If you look far enough down the road, Linux on the desktop is a reality. So they know that the OS monopoly is coming to an end. It is time to start getting a new monopoly ready to take its place.
They will ride this gravy train as long as they can, and then they will concede the OS market and start charging the same per-computer tax for the CLR. They won't care what OS is running underneath it. The OS will become a low-margin commodity, and they may even just starting giving Windows away for free. The profit margins will simply be relocated upward to a higher layer of this new and thicker notion of a platform.
BTW, don't even think about suggesting that Java will win because it was here first. Java is to the CLR as Lotus-1-2-3 was to Excel. Some people innovate. Other people specialize in refinement and broad market penetration.
My CS degree didn't teach me any particular skill that has been practical in my software development career. Nonetheless, as an employer, I continue to use the presence of a solid CS degree on a resume as a good indicator. It correlates very well with the likelihood that the candidate will be an excellent developer. But that doesn't mean that the degree taught that person anything useful about the development of software.
If you want a degree, get it for yourself, not for your career. You'll be a better person when you get done, but not a better programmer.
And BTW, stop saying that you can complete a CS degree in one year. It makes you sound clueless, not clueful.
Joel is right. Programmers don't read code because they don't like doing it.
Most programmers act like the universe revolves around them, apparently believing that their job should never ask them to do something that isn't fun.
It doesn't matter whether the code is well-commented or not -- it usually needs to be read. The natural tendency to read code is an excellent way to distinguish the best developers from the rest.
You radically overstate the status of the document formerly referred to as HTML 3.0. This was never a standard of any kind. It was Dave Raggett's proposal for a next generation of HTML.
:-)
I was chair of the HTML Working Group (IETF) back then, and I was amazed how many people perceived Dave's labeling of that document to be gospel. His document never had any consensus behind it of any kind, and it was not widely implemented. He coded it in his prototype browser, and emacs-w3 implemented it of course, along with every other feature suggested by anyone.
BTW, HTML 3.0 was *not* an attempt to bring sanity to the demented browser implementations. Raggett's document predated the dementia.
After we finished the standardization of HTML 2.0 within the IETF, that Working Group was shut down, and I joined the W3C group, to help with the standardization of HTML 3.2. Yes, it was unfortunate that the effort moved into an organization which was open only to corporate members. However, there was a very substantial need to get the major browser vendors to agree on *something*, and that process was clearly just not going to happen in IETF meetings.
By this point, HTML 3.0 was old news. Not even Raggett was pushing it anymore. It was a nice doc, and way ahead of its time, but it should have been titled something a bit less pretentious.
The AbiWord project is truly a Bazaar. In fact, they have refined some very explicit practices which are designed to help lower the barriers, allowing new contributors to join up.
This is an interesting perspective, and it is the first time I have seen such a concise assertion that the wrapper toolkits are inferior to the have-their-own-widgets variety. My problem with kits like Gtk and Qt, which provide their own substitutes for all the system native widgets, is that the resulting app never feel native. Some of the kits seem to do an astonishing job, but the resulting apps are still not quite right. Dogs bark at them, and children are not fooled.
-- Eric W. Sink
This is Slashdot. We are self-professed "Nerds". One of my definitions of a nerd is someone who thinks that technology is interesting. Normal people aren't like that. They desperately want technology to be boring.
I wrote this article a few months ago, but it might be of interest to the readers of this thread. Enjoy!
-- Eric W. Sink
-- Eric W. Sink
I spent a little bit of time, a long time ago, trying to figure out which GUI layer they used. Eventually, I found a mention of Bristol in some PostScript generated by StarWord. Perhaps they only used Bristol for the printer driver layer?
-- Eric W. Sink
-- Eric W. Sink
I rather doubt that Sun can turn StarOffice into a profit center of its own, regardless of what kind of license they use. From that perspective, they didn't risk much, so not much courage was required.
Still, it's hard to overstate the level of inertia inside companies that are as old and large as Sun. (Yes, I know that in the context of the market as a whole, Sun is terribly young and small, but we're talking about tech companies here). I'm certain that someone made this decision over a substantial amount of internal opposition.
-- Eric W. Sink
I have speculated for a long time about what might happen if someone decided to take an existing, mature office suite and make it truly Open Source.
I haven't exactly been sitting on the edge of my seat. It has seemed likely that someone would do it eventually, but the event has just never seemed very imminent. It's clear that Microsoft, with 95% market share and over 10B annual revenues, has no incentive to make their suite Open Source. Corel has far too little clue, and IBM/Lotus have far too much.
The only glimmer of hope has been Sun, which seems to have a practice of being smart during the even-numbered years and downright silly during the odd-numbered ones.
An Open Source version of StarOffice would open up a remarkable number of opportunities. In the hope that this rumor is revealed to be true, I would like to applaud all of those people at Sun who contributed to the execution of this bold, visionary decision.
And frankly, I'm insulted that none of those people called me. :-) Granted, I doubt that our little 28-person company is even a blip on their radar screen. However, as founder of the AbiWord project, SourceGear has a lot of experience in the world StarOffice is about to join. In fact, I daresay that there is no one else on earth who knows more about losing money on Open Source office apps than I do. :-)
I think that the response from the Open Source community is an important opportunity, and I would like to offer my unsolicited advice regarding the appropriate tenor of our response:
The point is that Sun is making the only decision which will allow StarOffice to become better. It's never about where you are -- it's about where you are going.
For example, I'm fairly sure that StarOffice is built upon a Win32 compatibility library from Bristol. They can't GPL that. The spell checker is probably not theirs. In fact, most full-featured office suites today are built using a bunch of third-party components. If the first source code tarball from Sun is even buildable, I'll be surprised.
But I won't be complaining about it. Doing so is not going to benefit anyone.
Even in an Open Source world, there is room for multiple efforts. Many of the people who work on AbiWord or Gnumeric are doing so for the enjoyment or experience. StarOffice will meet different needs, and there is nothing preventing both projects from reaching their goals. In fact, the existence of StarOffice is more likely to benefit AbiWord and Gnumeric than it is likely to cause harm.
There was a recent published interview with someone from the Kylix team at Borlaprise. This guy gets it. He said things like, "Our success does not require Microsoft's failure", and, "When television came along, radio didn't suddenly go away."
It is possible that this GPL release of StarOffice will eventually cause some impact to the proprietary players. However, we need to speak not in terms of extinction or annihilation, but in terms of reduction of margins.
And we need to give it time before the effects start to be visible. Microsoft's product manager for Office is not scared, and [s]he doesn't need to be.
-- Eric W. Sink