Comments on: Vendor Lock-in & Open Source Lock-in

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 06:25:13 +0000

Careful… you will love it. However, $1k American, 1,358 Ozzie Dollaz should be an affordable tool for a developer budget, even in a small shop.

By: andy johnston

andy johnston — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 06:19:19 +0000

Wow, this post really sums up the way I have been feeling towards the whole flash platform thing. It’s all so confusing I feel like going back to the secure world of print design, at least photoshop and illustrator dont change their hotkeys and such around all the time..

But seriously though I have spent a huge amount of time moving from flash 4 timeline based animations to as, as1, as2. I would love to have a go at using the new flex builder but I am worried that I will love it and once again it will be priced way out of the small to medium size studio market.

Who would ever have thought that I would be actually considering microsoft as offering a sensible alternative?

Maybe I’ll just brush up on my js swap layers code from 1995 and call myself an AJAX developer. Sigh.

By: Daniel Freeman

Daniel Freeman — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 02:50:12 +0000

I like it when you write like this. Early adopter blues - I share your grief. I've dug myself in quite deep with my investment (time and money) in Macromedia's assumed future direction. It's probably more my interpretation of the vision. My assumption about the direction that MM/Adobe/Yahoo, Microsoft, Google?... all seem to be heading. It's hard to be clear above the noise of sabres rattling on all sides. Like you, I have a very clear vision about what I want from the Flash Platform (link1, link2, link3). I'd love the opportunity to share my vision. But no-one is interested in discussing Central since it went out of fashion. Cold Shoulder. Macromedia just went quiet about Central - no explanation. The Central developers discussion list got switched off abruptly without explanation. Central development went stale. Abandoned developers went away angry. I stuck with it until recently. I continued to evangelise my vision. Like you, I was interested in a particular focus. Not enterprise. The Central branding issue was irrelevant to me. If MM's logo helped me to sell more of my applications to consumers - then that's a good thing. I didn't want to customise Central to lock-out competition either. Like you, I was in the minority. A heratic. Initial pricing/licensing putting developers off - that sounds familar too. Now Apollo is on the horizon. We don't know much about it. When it will be?, When developers can play with it?, How it will be pushed to consumers?. I'm really disappointed in Macromedia that they don't have it ready yet. They've had plenty of time since Central 1.5. They've lost the momentum. Central 1.x was never a product. That's fair enough. It was an enthusiastic alliance between Macromedia and developers. It was an incredible resource. It's a pity that Macromedia allowed it to go to waste. Arrogance or stupidity?

By: Bryan Rieger

Bryan Rieger — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 19:51:38 +0000

Great post Jesse!
I used to use a (commercial) open source product called iShell that was built on a very obscure language called Key that was somewhat based off of Eiffel. It was open, so in theory I could make the changes I wanted or hire someone – but finding a developer (or learning Key) was extremely difficult (right up there with Ocaml I’d imagine) and then maintaining the separate code base would have been a nightmare. That said, I have been using Macromedia’s products for over a decade now, and have to say I very much agree with you – time to move on from Flash (it’s been fun, but it’s over), but I’ve been bitten by Macromedia’s Enterprise offerings before (Generator, SiteSpring, Multiuser server, etc) and don’t intent to go down that road again… I love the idea of Flex, but I think I like the long term options more with OpenLaszlo. Apparently they have an AJAX (God, I HATE that term) and a .NET publisher in the works (I’ll believe it when I see it) – I wouldn’t expect that kind of choice from Flex/MM/Adobe.

By: Brian Lesser

Brian Lesser — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 19:43:19 +0000

Hi Jesse,
Thanks for a thoughtful and interesting post. As I was reading it I marveled at your persistence. I mean you are talking about being forced to change tools in order to build rich web applications. It sounds like you’ve done it three times: from Director to Flash, from Flash to Flame, and from Flame to Flex. Rereading your post it sounds more like you are locked into Macromedia’s Flash ‘platform’ than to a particular tool and have paid a real price for that. This is the kind of thing