I think you're right that CPAN got going because of its open access and wide distribution. But I also think it's a different world now than it was when CPAN started. Sourceforge, CodeHaus, and others have made it easy for developers to get that kind of distribution -- and much more, such as bug tracking and announcement lists -- for free and for any language. Many of the needs CPAN fulfilled no longer are as pressing.
CPAN's utility for developers, though, continues, and that's what I hope CodeZoo can offer for other languages. I think the problems for Java (and other) developers are much different than those CPAN faced at its launch; for instance, which one of these 200 Java XML parsers am I supposed to use!? We've designed the site to address the needs we see today.
You make a good point about open submissions encouraging new developers, though, and I think we should have a way to provide that. I'd call it the "code petting zoo," but that comes out wrong...
In short, I think it's a good deal for Ask Jeeves. They're trying to compete with Google and Yahoo, and to do that they need to do something new. The user profiles Bloglines has would make a great tool for pricing Google AdWord-style text ads -- but the "oo" companies (G*gle and Yah*) don't have the same incentive to try something radically different. They're sticking with what works. Maybe by offering a richer profile to ad buyers, Ask Jeeves will be able to break into the search market more aggressively.
The Popular Power client uses a Java sandbox to protect users from job code. We are also the only company with clients for Windows, Linux, and Mac. We use Java for our Internet projects for exactly the reasons you mention.
You ask whether there is any reason Java would not work for this purpose; the only reason I know of is that some industries (e.g., pharmaceuticals) have not adopted Java for their large-scale computation. In these cases, we provide the company an enterprise server product that lets them run code written in any language on their own machines behind their firewall. You lose the protection of the Java sandbox, but since the same company is both writing and running the code, this is a good trade-off.
> Does it worry anybody that most of these
> kind of projects coming down the pipe will
> be run by corporations that most likely
> won't release the source to the client
> software?
Popular Power has committed to open-sourcing our client. (Tim O'Reilly from O'Reilly & Associates is an investor and is on our board of directors; Brian Behlendorf from Collab.net and the Apache Software Foundation is also an investor.)
Best,
Marc Hedlund <marc@popularpower.com>
CEO, Popular Power
Slashdot Mirror
Matts,
I think you're right that CPAN got going because of its open access and wide distribution. But I also think it's a different world now than it was when CPAN started. Sourceforge, CodeHaus, and others have made it easy for developers to get that kind of distribution -- and much more, such as bug tracking and announcement lists -- for free and for any language. Many of the needs CPAN fulfilled no longer are as pressing.
CPAN's utility for developers, though, continues, and that's what I hope CodeZoo can offer for other languages. I think the problems for Java (and other) developers are much different than those CPAN faced at its launch; for instance, which one of these 200 Java XML parsers am I supposed to use!? We've designed the site to address the needs we see today.
You make a good point about open submissions encouraging new developers, though, and I think we should have a way to provide that. I'd call it the "code petting zoo," but that comes out wrong...
Thanks for all the great comments.
Marc Hedlund
O'Reilly
In short, I think it's a good deal for Ask Jeeves. They're trying to compete with Google and Yahoo, and to do that they need to do something new. The user profiles Bloglines has would make a great tool for pricing Google AdWord-style text ads -- but the "oo" companies (G*gle and Yah*) don't have the same incentive to try something radically different. They're sticking with what works. Maybe by offering a richer profile to ad buyers, Ask Jeeves will be able to break into the search market more aggressively.
More in the full blog post.
You ask whether there is any reason Java would not work for this purpose; the only reason I know of is that some industries (e.g., pharmaceuticals) have not adopted Java for their large-scale computation. In these cases, we provide the company an enterprise server product that lets them run code written in any language on their own machines behind their firewall. You lose the protection of the Java sandbox, but since the same company is both writing and running the code, this is a good trade-off.
Best,
Marc Hedlund <marc@popularpower.com>
CEO, Popular Power <http://www.popularpower.com/>
Give your computer something to dream about (tm)
www.popularpower.com
> kind of projects coming down the pipe will
> be run by corporations that most likely
> won't release the source to the client
> software?
Popular Power has committed to open-sourcing our client. (Tim O'Reilly from O'Reilly & Associates is an investor and is on our board of directors; Brian Behlendorf from Collab.net and the Apache Software Foundation is also an investor.)
Best,
Marc Hedlund <marc@popularpower.com>
CEO, Popular Power
Give your computer something to dream about.
www.popularpower.com