Can ColdFusion Survive Under Microsoft?
Thursday 17 February 2011 09:24 PM
Speculation goes, as it usually does, Microsoft is thinking of buying Adobe outright. We know Adobe is in a bad shape. And maybe Adobe likes the idea of being under Microsoft’s roof. Personally, I care about neither Microsoft nor Adobe. I do care about ColdFusion. I care about ColdFusion because ColdFusion is my life––I make my living from it, and I wouldn’t want any harm to come to that.
Macromedia treated ColdFusion warmly and genuinely––that is, until Shantanu Narayen bullied Macromedia with numerous lawsuits in order to force a merger, as some allege. One can say with confidence that ColdFusion was further developed under Adobe’s roof, but I always had a the feeling that ColdFusion was a sort of Cinderella in the house of Adobe. Whenever I looked into Adobe documentation or examples––the inDesign server, for instance––there were no ColdFusion examples. But there were php and .net examples, all right. Humans seek patterns and draw conclusions––that’s what I was doing.
I have a picture in my mind: Microsoft sends FoxPro into a broom closet under the stairs, where all the spiders and bugs take daily refuge. It’s cold and dark, and Microsoft keeps FoxPro there until cold hands extract its vital organs and implant them into MS Access and MS Exchange. FoxPro died alone. There are no drums, no bagpipes.
If ColdFusion goes under Microsoft’s control, it is quite possible ColdFusion will get to have long conversations with FoxPro and the many others who share the same broom closet. Railo may able to keep ColdFusion developers alive for awhile––if Microsoft allows Railo to stay alive. But without enterprise level support and confidence, Railo/ColdFusion will become like PostgreSQL––brilliantly capable, but uneventful and uninteresting. BlueDragon may survive with their current cliental, and it even may able to receive a few Adobe ColdFusion Clients too, but Microsoft will absorb the majority into their own platforms.
Is this the correct time for ColdFusion developers to seriously invest in those horrible Microsoft Exams?
Posted by Saman W Jayasekara at Saturday 16 October 2010 04:03 PM
.
This and That
.
ColdFusion
Marcos
Monday 25 October 2010 07:38 AM
Railo team is disorganized and clueless on how to package and market to get a wider audience, so don't count on it, it has been and will remain a niche toy for a small group of out of touch and clueless eggheads that make up the main team. Even open source php frameworks and even cms are better packaged and more professionally documented than Railo. It may be a good widget, but that's not enough to attract a large community. Railo and Blue Dragon are run by clueless types, how dumb do you have to be to fail at selling a faster free product?
Thursday 12 May 2011 06:53 AM
This is an issue of resources. Some of the guys there work flat out developing Railo...and thank God! You're comparing open source projects like PHP to Railo when Railo has a much smaller client base. Everyone knows PHP is a giant in open source technology, so your comparison is rubbish.
Railo is a great product, but they don't have a huge budget to market it. Adobe on the other hand does have a budget, but doesn't market it. Tell me now who you should really be annoyed with?
If the Railo team has plenty of marketing money, I'm sure they'd go to town with it! And don't forget, regardless of this, the Railo team are made up primarily of DEVELOPERS, not sales-people.
Stop whining and get out there, write a blog about Railo and spread the word. An open source project is made truly great by the community, not just the main guys behind it.
a CF fan
Tuesday 19 October 2010 04:22 AM
Hi Spills,
"This kind of rumor is the exact reason for the CF community to support OpenBD and Railo! ".
This totally makes sense, as if anything happens, free version is there, the CF-community and we all cf-er's will go with it , also the lucky clients/customers who realized the product....
And I think, this is the right time to make Railo more popularise...by telling Railo is nothing other than ColdFusion and is FREE
Thanks
spills
Monday 18 October 2010 02:19 PM
This kind of rumor is the exact reason for the CF community to support OpenBD and Railo! I am a recent convert to Railo and am not looking back as so far server performance and community support have been awesome. Railo's model appears to me, to be based somewhat like MYSQL, where the community edition totally rocks but if needed there is access to enterprise support .
a CF fan
Monday 18 October 2010 02:07 AM
hi all,
I am not much worried, whatever happens, Railo is there, the community will make it go long. I am from India, here the ColdFusion platform rocks now, a great demand for CF developers here, lots of jobs coming in everyday from medium firms to even very big MNC's...they require guys skilled with CF8 & CF9...yes they are new projects...yes that means CF is growing, I think this is the right time for any developer to get some CF skills...
I think Adobe did and doing a nice job for CF, with the evangelists
thanks...
Sunday 17 October 2010 10:22 AM
We're all concerned about future of CF. Even my colleague, ex .NET developer is concerned. We invested years and this could become wasted time with just 2 little signatures :(
Anyways, CF as it is now has already death sentence signed and hanging above his head. I love CF, but everything around it sucks big time. New WACK books have same old boring sentences since the first issue, parts of the framework are total crap, CFML committee fall apart before even started doing some good and so on...
So all in all, as much as I'm happy working in CF, having great community, super atmosphere among developers, I'm also angry on Adobe and evangelists and others who are destroying this.
Maybe we could stand up for our community and make our destiny by helping guys from Railo and BD?! Look at other players out there, Scala, Groovy, PHP, Ruby, all home grown technologies kicking ass of their big brothers.
I vote for the new CFML committee, without Adobe!!! To make a proper language for gods sake!
We need a proper language, proper books and couple of good people running community!