It's amazing how relationships develop in BlogSpace. On ?Sunday? I got a nice comment from Russ in Spain (not Russ in Washington who writes about Radio). I responded and mailed it to him (tip: I recommend this if you want to build "community" around your blog; it works) as well as posting it. He fired back. I shot him some private thoughts on Groove, having been recently forced into using the rather large beast that is Groove. He then posted his Groove thoughts. Of which I pretty much agree although I am harsher (some of which is platform bias since the time of day when I need groove, I'm no longer working on Windows). He then draws an analogy with a new thing called Rebol. He argues that Rebol won't succeed because of privacy. My take is different and one that I emailed to Joe Friend a few months ago (I apologize if I already posted this, I intended to but never did).
[Approx Date: June 17]
Hi Joe,
Here's a couple of thoughts based on the obligatory 3 minutes of site surfing.
a) Sounds interesting
b) Proprietary but not wanting to admit it.
c) Requires client side software:
http://www.rebol.com/express-form.html
This is a huge disadvantage for you I would think. I don't know that much about indonesia but I would think that getting sw updates distributed would be a nightmare. And, I have rarely seen a client side vendor that doesn't regularly update. They all claim they don't but they always do and even the best of the self updating schemes require a full update from time to time. If it's of any size at all (and I think it has to be) that would be a nightmare.
d) Requires their own server. "To obtain an evaluation copy of our REBOL IOS Express client and a user account on our Express server, fill out the form below. Please provide enough information to help us understand your interest."
My guess is that developing stuff on their server from your location would be hard / time wasteful.
e) It's not open source. I know I sound like a broken record on this one but, more and more, I see the entire software biz dramatically changing within the next 2 - 5 years. And what I see is people moving to much more Open Source -- even for primary applications (office is the real exception). It's unclear to me that you can launch a new software product as a small company effectively -- and this is where the innovation happens. People can understand paying Microsoft, Bea, IBM or Sun for software but it's hard to make a big $$$ committment to a small company. Sure we can argue about Radio being an exception but Radio has huge momentum from the years of effort Dave put into Frontier and UserLand isn't a new company.
For almost every single category today you can find an open source equivalent that is as good as the proprietary solution if not better. And, while the support model for OS stuff is *different*, that doesn't mean it's bad at all. It's bizarre but it just plain works. Try hanging out on the php-general mailing list sometime and you'll be surprised at how quickly problems are resolved. Additionally I just plain find the quality in Open Source to be so much higher on certain projects that it is just bizarre by our standards. These people just plain care about their work. Drupal is an outstanding indication of this. I don't know all the team but Kjartan, one of the leads and my primary contact, is just plain unbelievable about this. I've honestly never seen anything like it -- and I used to think that I did a good job back when I had my company. I can (and am) learn from him.
My gut read of people in high tech, and I really don't think I am wrong about this, is that people are just plain damn sick to death of crappy software quality. We all feel that "well I paid for this, it should just plain work". I find it so unacceptable to pay for products when the Open Source version works better. Sure the UI may be lacking but when it works that's all that really matters (as long as it is basically usable). Look at my essay yesterday about Driving Customers Away. Within 2 hours, Hanan, one of my readers, popped up with a free alternative. And, realize too that "bugs", are highly user perception right now. I felt that JASC the company was bug ridden based on how they handled support@company.com. To some extent we are all looking for reasons not to purchase stuff when there are problems. I just don't have the tolerance for crap that I used to. None of us do. None of us do. If you're going to charge me then you damn well ought to be perfect. That may be a crappy ass attitude but it's increasingly common. We tolerate things from our legacy vendors (MS, Adobe, Lotus) that we just won't from new companies.
Disclaimer: Highly vertical markets are an exception as they always are.
Disclaimer: Enhancements / addons to proprietary products are an exception as are low priced utility software.
f) If you need communications protocols then I'd look at the Jabber stuff. It's actually pretty damn good. I'm gearing up to do some work in python and php on this if you need real feedback, wait 2 - 4 weeks.
g) I found this interesting: http://www.rebol.com/email-problem.html
Whenever I see people wanting to replace email, my alert meter goes up 50%. I'll be the last one to say that email is perfect -- but the core store and forward messaging concept is so damn strong that I find it hard to imagine something replacing it well -- without ending up just as email is. And, then, all we did is make a silly, proprietary vendor richer without solving the problems. I am a huge email fan because, even when the servers go down, etc, the mail just keeps flowing. We all make a big deal out of "it's in the email, didn't you get it? Oh, I'll resend it" -- but this is the new equivalent of "The dog ate my homework". It's just not all that true.
Bias disclaimer: I have a new product coming out in this space that adds into Outlook and makes email, well, suck less. Pre-release details available soon. This doesn't mean that I am wrong about this, it just gives you perspective. I have a commercial interest here so that may affect your perception. Be that as it may.
h) The company is just plain foolish, imho. IOS is a registered Cisco trademark and they are setting themselves up for a lawsuit.
i) You can't establish platform technology at present unless you are giant or it's free. This is going to fall into some kind of small nichey space unless they change direction and, based on my read of the management team, they won't. You either understand this or you don't. I find it very interesting that no one on the senior team ever built an Internet protocol / RFC. That's bad.
Summary
The product looks interesting. I see the issues of a client side piece being the most problematic. I also can't see making a strategic committment to any kind of "platform" technology without it being fully open source.
Gah! This ended up as an essay. I should go boolean more often. That's ok. I'll merge it into an blog soon enough. A lot of my stuff originates from this so I never mind writing emails.
Scott
