[REBOL] Re: Rebol SDK vs Command
From: edoconnor::gmail::com at: 15-Sep-2007 14:59
In order to get paid for his work, REBOL will need to achieve a
measure of popularity. But what is a key obstacle to popularity?
Source which isn't fully open.
Here's the unpleasant reality: There isn't any money to be made from
programming languages. The market is saturated with lots of free ones,
and individual consumers (developers) expect them to be free. The
small business market, startups, academia and forward-thinking
mega-corps (all 5 or 6 of them) also look to free programming tools.
What's left? The slow moving, middle-of-the-heard corporations, which
are the most conservative of all. They will only purchase the big
brand names (MS, IBM, Sun, Oracle, Adobe); they will never build
software in a little-known language unless it is bought by one of the
big brands.
There are a few exceptions to the above. There are some very small
niche players, such as TCX (the MySQL folks), Kx Systems (the makers
of kdb+), the Runtime Revolution people, and others. These companies
survive by selling IDEs, compilers, and other add-ons, but very few
companies today survive by selling core language/scripting technology.
20 years ago the market allowed that business model, but not today.
So with regard to open source and worrying about forks, offshoots and
competing versions, I say: Don't focus on problems you don't have yet.
Take a giant risk and trust developers to embrace your language on
their own terms. Once you've established that you're not out to turn
them into sharecroppers, they might be willing to take a look at the
true merits of the language and invest some time into using,
evangelizing and enhancing it. At that point RT may still be
cash-poor, but at least there may be a loyal community based upon
trust and DIY work ethic, with good prospects for an emerging market.
Who knows, with a little luck, in a few years RT could fork their
business model and deploy a modest commercial strategy along the lines
of TCX or Zend.
Ed
On 9/15/07, Chris Dwyer wrote:
