Dave Winer writes:
Sorry Dan, this is bullshit. "If you're not Microsoft or maybe IBM/Sun with Java, development tool makers don't stand a chance against good Open Source projects."  [Scripting News]
I agree with Dave, probably for different reasons. I think the sweet spot for Open Source development tools is the experienced developer who chooses tool stability over the ability to perform a particular action slightly better. Commercial tools can and should focus their efforts where the most money is to be made... in other words on the developer who is very new to a particular platform or just new to deveopment in general.
Then the pitch goes something like: "Don't worry about the intricacies of WSDL or EJB or HTML select boxes - just push this deploy button or drag and drop this widget and we'll take away the decisions you're not ready to make anyway."
When you get to be in that minority of developers who can make better decisions than the toolmakers, the features you have to pay for start to subtract value.
I think this logic tends to get inverted: better developers use open source tools, ergo open source tools are better. Is this Argument By Generalization?
One last ramble in support of commercial sw: Of course I thought about building a replacement for Radio Userland for blogging out of the Template::Toolkit or OpenACS, but I didn't want to spend any time supporting a custom software project. I like building, not maintaining. That, plus the network effects and endorsement of a lot of people like Jon Udell, made the decision easy.
2:49:31 PM
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