Comments for Adam Flater : Technology Blog http://www.adamflater.net Adobe Flex, RIA, UX and other bits Fri, 23 Dec 2011 07:27:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by Shashank Tiwari http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-752 Shashank Tiwari Fri, 23 Dec 2011 07:27:49 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-752 @Adam, I am not here to either argue or to convince you. You know me well and hopefully will agree that a man who wrote 3 books on Flex, ran some of the largest Flex Camps over the years, had a ton of Flex clients, and possibly was involved in some of the largest Flex projects, isn't a Flex hater! In fact as you may possibly guess, I quite like the framework. The problem though is that my liking isn't enough or relevant to Flex's future. The enterprise world always had difficultly including Flash related tools in their development stack. Flex broke that barrier and was well adopted for a bit. Then our dear friends at Adobe screwed things up first by trying to rebrand it, then trying to get entangled into the HTML5 debate, and finally sucking up to the promise of HTML5. Now Adobe has, through their actions, proclaimed Flex to be terminally ill and incurable. The only fate of such a technology usually is marginalization. Now as far as Apache foundation goes, they are one big warehouse of good and bad projects. The Gold standard that Apache was has been diluted for some time now. Some projects are very successful, some are moderately used, and a few are simply junk. Most successful Apache projects in the recent times, for example Hadoop family of tools, or Cassandra, have seen huge infusion of capital and tons of full-time paid developers working on projects. Much of this money is being pumped in because the investors have a plan for monetizing and earning multiple times of their investment. Apache projects or for that matter most successful open source projects are no more run by hippies who code all night for love and fresh air. In contrast to the well funded Apache projects, the already limited Flex community is thinning out everyday and most of the folks are members of small consulting firms. Consulting firms usually follow the direction of the wind, unless they want to go out of business. Given that how many firms are going to put their money, reputation, and future in the medium to long term in trying to save Flex. Possibly a handful will. But most of these companies, despite the noise they make today, are so small (where there revenues are often less than 15 to 20 million dollars a year and they are not sitting on million of dollars of VC money either) that I wonder if they can afford to swim against the tide. Last but not the least, have you wondered why Roy Fielding is singing songs of Adobe praise and trying to sell Apache to the Flex community and make it appear like its for the sake of freedom and prosperity that Adobe is donating Flex to Apache. (Flex is already open source. Isn't it? BlazeDS is too, which apparently hasn't seen updates for sometime now :)) With all due respect to his talent and his contributions to open source, its quite possible that the $250 million that Adobe paid to acquire Day is what is making him speak. Good luck. This is the last comment from my side on this thread. Pardon me if I hurt your sentiments. My intentions wasn't to do so and I will only be happy if Flex gets some life support cause without it Adobe has left it to die. Also, if any current Flex developer desires to remain decently employed in the longer term accepting the reality and looking beyond Flex could possibly be helpful. Alternatives are behind today. They may not be tomorrow. Also, I would urge that try not too be fooled again by the HTML5 drama Adobe is trying to sell or you will be helping incubate the Edge project a few years from now as well ;) @Adam,
I am not here to either argue or to convince you. You know me well and hopefully will agree that a man who wrote 3 books on Flex, ran some of the largest Flex Camps over the years, had a ton of Flex clients, and possibly was involved in some of the largest Flex projects, isn’t a Flex hater! In fact as you may possibly guess, I quite like the framework. The problem though is that my liking isn’t enough or relevant to Flex’s future. The enterprise world always had difficultly including Flash related tools in their development stack. Flex broke that barrier and was well adopted for a bit. Then our dear friends at Adobe screwed things up first by trying to rebrand it, then trying to get entangled into the HTML5 debate, and finally sucking up to the promise of HTML5. Now Adobe has, through their actions, proclaimed Flex to be terminally ill and incurable. The only fate of such a technology usually is marginalization.

Now as far as Apache foundation goes, they are one big warehouse of good and bad projects. The Gold standard that Apache was has been diluted for some time now. Some projects are very successful, some are moderately used, and a few are simply junk. Most successful Apache projects in the recent times, for example Hadoop family of tools, or Cassandra, have seen huge infusion of capital and tons of full-time paid developers working on projects. Much of this money is being pumped in because the investors have a plan for monetizing and earning multiple times of their investment. Apache projects or for that matter most successful open source projects are no more run by hippies who code all night for love and fresh air. In contrast to the well funded Apache projects, the already limited Flex community is thinning out everyday and most of the folks are members of small consulting firms. Consulting firms usually follow the direction of the wind, unless they want to go out of business. Given that how many firms are going to put their money, reputation, and future in the medium to long term in trying to save Flex. Possibly a handful will. But most of these companies, despite the noise they make today, are so small (where there revenues are often less than 15 to 20 million dollars a year and they are not sitting on million of dollars of VC money either) that I wonder if they can afford to swim against the tide.

Last but not the least, have you wondered why Roy Fielding is singing songs of Adobe praise and trying to sell Apache to the Flex community and make it appear like its for the sake of freedom and prosperity that Adobe is donating Flex to Apache. (Flex is already open source. Isn’t it? BlazeDS is too, which apparently hasn’t seen updates for sometime now :) ) With all due respect to his talent and his contributions to open source, its quite possible that the $250 million that Adobe paid to acquire Day is what is making him speak.

Good luck. This is the last comment from my side on this thread. Pardon me if I hurt your sentiments. My intentions wasn’t to do so and I will only be happy if Flex gets some life support cause without it Adobe has left it to die. Also, if any current Flex developer desires to remain decently employed in the longer term accepting the reality and looking beyond Flex could possibly be helpful. Alternatives are behind today. They may not be tomorrow. Also, I would urge that try not too be fooled again by the HTML5 drama Adobe is trying to sell or you will be helping incubate the Edge project a few years from now as well ;)

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by JCLang http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-748 JCLang Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:17:00 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-748 Adam, congrats for your commiter status! Adam, congrats for your commiter status!

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by Graham Phillips http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-746 Graham Phillips Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:56:08 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-746 All well and good, but the Flash Player, upon which the Flex SDK runs and depends, is still and forever will be (as long as Flash exists as a product) an internal Adobe product. No-one has yet explained how the Flex SDK and Flash Builder (which although Adobe have pledged to continue to support, I believe they will be dropping within the next 2 years) will remain in sync with developments and innovations in the Flash plug-in. They also want to eventually open-source the compiler, thereby washing their hands of the whole technology. However you spin it, Adobe have taken a strategic decision to ditch "enterprise" and focus on marketing which has left a lot of us in the lurch. HTML5 and iPhone have been used as the excuse. All well and good, but the Flash Player, upon which the Flex SDK runs and depends, is still and forever will be (as long as Flash exists as a product) an internal Adobe product. No-one has yet explained how the Flex SDK and Flash Builder (which although Adobe have pledged to continue to support, I believe they will be dropping within the next 2 years) will remain in sync with developments and innovations in the Flash plug-in. They also want to eventually open-source the compiler, thereby washing their hands of the whole technology. However you spin it, Adobe have taken a strategic decision to ditch “enterprise” and focus on marketing which has left a lot of us in the lurch. HTML5 and iPhone have been used as the excuse.

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by Amit Goel http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-745 Amit Goel Sat, 17 Dec 2011 06:42:10 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-745 Exactly :) Exactly :)

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by Tom http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-744 Tom Sat, 17 Dec 2011 05:01:17 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-744 Remember Aldus? Remember GoLive? It was a really cool and different HTML editor until Adobe trashed it after (Macromedia) DreamWeaver came along and took all the marketshare. Macromedia understood the importance of its user community and building an ecosystem until Adobe swallowed it. Then there was Scintilla CoolEdit, an awesome audio editor which Adobe pounced on and wanted $300.00 U.S. for putting their logo on it. I think this is the best possible outcome for Flex. Viva Apache! Remember Aldus? Remember GoLive? It was a really cool and different HTML editor until Adobe trashed it after (Macromedia) DreamWeaver came along and took all the marketshare. Macromedia understood the importance of its user community and building an ecosystem until Adobe swallowed it. Then there was Scintilla CoolEdit, an awesome audio editor which Adobe pounced on and wanted $300.00 U.S. for putting their logo on it. I think this is the best possible outcome for Flex. Viva Apache!

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by Edwin http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-743 Edwin Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:34:02 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-743 As one of many who spent a non-trivial amount of time and money hearing Adobe inform and make their case for the Flex platform (enterprise and mobile) in Oct 2011 only to see them blow up that platform a few weeks later, it's still hard to blow off the WTF of it all. Adobe is killing it's Flash platform so that it can get into digital ad metrics? While it's still hard to experience the web circa 2011/2012 without encountering lot's of Flash? That just seems crazy. If Adobe had delivered the whole Flash platform to Apache (Flash/AIR/Flex) instead of just Flex and done so in a way that respected the commitments many of us have made to the platform, this might be different. But it's hard to see how Apache Flex has a future when Adobe will probably blow up Flash/AIR in another clusterf__k sooner rather than later. As one of many who spent a non-trivial amount of time and money hearing Adobe inform and make their case for the Flex platform (enterprise and mobile) in Oct 2011 only to see them blow up that platform a few weeks later, it’s still hard to blow off the WTF of it all.

Adobe is killing it’s Flash platform so that it can get into digital ad metrics? While it’s still hard to experience the web circa 2011/2012 without encountering lot’s of Flash? That just seems crazy.

If Adobe had delivered the whole Flash platform to Apache (Flash/AIR/Flex) instead of just Flex and done so in a way that respected the commitments many of us have made to the platform, this might be different. But it’s hard to see how Apache Flex has a future when Adobe will probably blow up Flash/AIR in another clusterf__k sooner rather than later.

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by Steve http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-742 Steve Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:12:05 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-742 Nope, At the Flex Summit Adobe announced they are not creating an html5 application equivalent to Flex. Did I hear that wrong??? Edge is the closest thing but that is for creatives. We are on our own if we want to create enterprise level html5 apps. I doubt they would compete with JQuery, they are currently integrating JQuery into stuff... Nope, At the Flex Summit Adobe announced they are not creating an html5 application equivalent to Flex. Did I hear that wrong??? Edge is the closest thing but that is for creatives. We are on our own if we want to create enterprise level html5 apps. I doubt they would compete with JQuery, they are currently integrating JQuery into stuff…

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by Flex and It’s Future as an Apache Project | Roundarch Blog http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-741 Flex and It’s Future as an Apache Project | Roundarch Blog Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:42:52 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-741 [...] the whole blog post here. Read More | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks |          [...] [...] the whole blog post here. Read More | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks |          [...]

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by Stephane http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-740 Stephane Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:16:49 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-740 Not only for beginners, but for fast prototyping as well... Not only for beginners, but for fast prototyping as well…

]]> Comment on Huge Adobe Partnership to Open Source Flex with Apache Software Foundation … by GradleFx automated builds | RIAgora http://www.adamflater.net/2011/12/14/apache-flex-beginning/#comment-739 GradleFx automated builds | RIAgora Fri, 16 Dec 2011 01:03:09 +0000 http://www.adamflater.net/?p=511#comment-739 [...] of the community already posted great articles about what have been said. You can read this remarkable article by Adam Flater, another one by Peter Elst  and some great interviews on Nerd Radio. I’m [...] [...] of the community already posted great articles about what have been said. You can read this remarkable article by Adam Flater, another one by Peter Elst  and some great interviews on Nerd Radio. I’m [...]

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