Home » Language IDEs » ServerTools (WTP) » WTP proposal feedback: Commoditization
| WTP proposal feedback: Commoditization [message #21213] |
Thu, 06 May 2004 03:43  |
Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: ed.burnette.REMOVE.THIS.sas.com
I've been reading through the WTP proposal and have some questions and
feedback. To start with, one of the key principles is listed as follows:
"Vendor ecosystem vs. commoditization: The goal of this project is to
support a vital application development market, rather than to "commoditize"
viable commercial product spaces with an open source alternative. Commercial
vendors will use what this project delivers as a foundation for their own
product innovation and development efficiency. "
I'd like some clarification on this. The second sentence goes without saying
but the first one can be interpreted different ways.
IMHO, Eclipse and WTP are destined to "commoditize viable commercial product
spaces" and this is a good thing. The challenge for vendors is to focus on
the value they can add to that. The Platform should not be limited by
vendors' imaginations, rather, vendors' imaginations should be enabled,
stretched, and set free by the Platform. The Platform allows vendors to
focus on their core competencies rather than re-inventing the same wheel
that everone else has to invent. It also attracts a critical mass of
developer talent and mindshare by being free and open source.
To be more specific, I believe the ultimate goal for WTP's (and Eclipse's)
tools should be to be the best of breed in the Web and Java Tools market.
Right out of the box it should have equivalent or better functionality than
VS.NET, Project Rave, IDEA, Jbuilder, and so forth. Then *that* becomes the
baseline that all the vendors build on and use for their own projects. It's
a win for the users who get more functionality, commonality, and
interoperability, and it's a win for the vendors like SAS who can
concentrate on what they do best.
--Ed Burnette, SAS
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| Re: WTP proposal feedback: Commoditization [message #21245 is a reply to message #21213] |
Thu, 06 May 2004 13:59  |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: glongman.intelligentworks.nospam.com
Amen brother.
Imagine how great vendor offerings will be when they are no longer
re-inventing the wheel.
Geoff
"Ed Burnette" <ed.burnette@REMOVE.THIS.sas.com> wrote in message
news:c7cbru$t3c$1@eclipse.org...
> I've been reading through the WTP proposal and have some questions and
> feedback. To start with, one of the key principles is listed as follows:
>
> "Vendor ecosystem vs. commoditization: The goal of this project is to
> support a vital application development market, rather than to
"commoditize"
> viable commercial product spaces with an open source alternative.
Commercial
> vendors will use what this project delivers as a foundation for their own
> product innovation and development efficiency. "
>
> I'd like some clarification on this. The second sentence goes without
saying
> but the first one can be interpreted different ways.
>
> IMHO, Eclipse and WTP are destined to "commoditize viable commercial
product
> spaces" and this is a good thing. The challenge for vendors is to focus on
> the value they can add to that. The Platform should not be limited by
> vendors' imaginations, rather, vendors' imaginations should be enabled,
> stretched, and set free by the Platform. The Platform allows vendors to
> focus on their core competencies rather than re-inventing the same wheel
> that everone else has to invent. It also attracts a critical mass of
> developer talent and mindshare by being free and open source.
>
> To be more specific, I believe the ultimate goal for WTP's (and Eclipse's)
> tools should be to be the best of breed in the Web and Java Tools market.
> Right out of the box it should have equivalent or better functionality
than
> VS.NET, Project Rave, IDEA, Jbuilder, and so forth. Then *that* becomes
the
> baseline that all the vendors build on and use for their own projects.
It's
> a win for the users who get more functionality, commonality, and
> interoperability, and it's a win for the vendors like SAS who can
> concentrate on what they do best.
>
> --Ed Burnette, SAS
>
>
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| Re: WTP proposal feedback: Commoditization [message #21516 is a reply to message #21213] |
Sun, 09 May 2004 12:01 |
 Arthur Ryman
Messages: 92
Registered: July 2009 |
Member |
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Ed,
I believe the goal of WTP should be to support both the developer and
vendor communities. These two communities form a tighly linked
ecosystem. Vendors benefit from having a large and viable developer
community that can buy their products. Developers benefit from having an
innovative vendor community that provides them with excellent tools to
boost their productivity. WTP can serve both communities by initially
focusing on extending Eclipse with tools that support the additional
artifact types involved in Web and J2EE development. These tools should
bring all the Eclipse "franchise" functions, such as code assist, quick
fixes, and refactoring, to HTML, XML, SQL, EJB, Web services, etc. in a
seemless way. These tools will be immediately useful to developers and
will also form a platform on which vendors can build more advanced tools.
Of course, all technologies become commoditized over time. But there is
no shortage of new technologies constantly being introduced. WTP will be
a success if it enables vendors to quickly build advanced tools to
support the latest technologies.
-- Arthur
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| Re: WTP proposal feedback: Commoditization [message #21906 is a reply to message #21516] |
Mon, 10 May 2004 19:38 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: ed.burnette.REMOVE.THIS.sas.com
Arthur's and Bjorn's replies don't address my commoditization concern yet
but I think we're getting closer to the core issue.
Authur wrote: "The goal of WTP should be to support both the developer and
vendor communities."
Absolutely. In fact that's a given for any Eclipse project. I'm representing
one of those vendors after all.
Arthur: "WTP will be a success if it enables vendors to quickly build
advanced tools to support the latest technologies."
I agree with that but I'm not sure we mean the same thing when we say it.
This is why I'm asking for some clarification in the proposal. I'm not even
sure Arthur and Bjorn are agreeing here. This can't be one of those times
where we all think we're agreeing but in fact we all have something
different in mind.
Bjorn: "If Eclipse's goal were to give everything away for free, Eclipse
would not have the excellent contributions of companies like IBM, HP, SAP,
QNX, and many others."
Eclipse's goal is not to give everything away for free. That's impossible.
But I would argue that it should *at least* give away anything that forms
the base-line of any full featured product of its type, in other words, the
parts that are in common with all products of its type.
JDT is a good model to follow here. JDT provides Java editing, debugging,
project management, searching, type hierarchies, content assist, and lots of
other nice features that any modern development system should have. It even
goes beyond that, for example, raising the industry's bar on functionality
such as refactoring. Now suppose company X was involved early in the JDT
project and said 'our product already has refactoring, so JDT shouldn't have
it so that we can add value on top of JDT'. Did that kill the feature? No,
because everyone doing Java development needed it and it was too useful and
too broad to be vendor-specific. However, hooks were added so that vendors
could provide participants and extend the refactoring in unique ways. Full
featured, yet extendable: that's the Eclipse way.
Bjorn: "Eclipse is not about replacing VS .NET or IntelliJ or whatever with
free software."
Of course. However, any product built on Eclipse needs to be competitive in
the product space it is in (competitive = as good or better than products
not built on Eclipse). Do you agree with me so far? Now, the best way to
assure that is to make the base-line free version competitive in that space.
Then vendors in the Foundation will be "standing on a taller ladder" so to
speak when it comes to customized and extended uses of the technology. This
is the case with Eclipse in general and it should be with WTP in particular.
One thing you're missing here is that the alternatives are worse. For
example, there are a large number of developers who need most of their tools
to be free. Would we rather they use (and contribute to) something with a
GPL-type license with technology that cannot be used in most commercial
products, or something with an EPL-type license that can? The latter of
course. As a practical matter this means there can be no dumbing-down of
Eclipse technology.
Bjorn: "WTP will only be successful if it is seen by vendors as enhancing
their sales rather than cannibalizing them."
No. Thanks for keeping us vendors in mind, but your concern is misplaced. We
would rather have the platform be as full featured as possible, letting us
concentrate on our unique value-add. Keep raising that bar.
--Ed
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| Re: WTP proposal feedback: Commoditization [message #22503 is a reply to message #21906] |
Wed, 12 May 2004 09:19 |
Stefan Matthias Aust
Messages: 68
Registered: July 2009 |
Member |
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Ed Burnette wrote:
> Bjorn: "Eclipse is not about replacing VS .NET or IntelliJ or whatever with
> free software."
>
> Of course. However, any product built on Eclipse needs to be competitive in
> the product space it is in (competitive = as good or better than products
> not built on Eclipse). Do you agree with me so far? Now, the best way to
> assure that is to make the base-line free version competitive in that space.
> Then vendors in the Foundation will be "standing on a taller ladder" so to
> speak when it comes to customized and extended uses of the technology. This
> is the case with Eclipse in general and it should be with WTP in particular.
Here's my completely selfish and subjective point of view on the WTP
proposal. I don't know whether it's only me who things so or whether
others feel the same. Just count it as a single voice from the the
auditorium :)
I'd love to see a state-of-the-art JSP 2.0 editor tighly integrated with
the JDT - that is all the refactorings, searching for references,
declarations, syntax highlighting etc. - in Eclipse. Furthermore, I'd
love to use a graphical database designer and query tool - similar to
what mysql has for example. That's all I need (right now) and all I
care for. Well, okay, an HTML and XML editor would be nice, but
there're already other tools and I don't really need a tight integration
here.
So, if this project tries to delivery something like this, I'd be
interested in its progress. If it doesn't, I don't care.
While I understand the point of view to create a foundation for
comercial product because we all need money to survive, I couldn't care
less about such an open source project. As a potential user, I want
something as useful as the JDT - which is a state-of-the-art Java IDE -
and frankly - I want it for free.
bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust // "Zweifel sind der Ansporn des Denkens..." -U
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| Re: WTP proposal feedback: Commoditization [message #23427 is a reply to message #23344] |
Sun, 16 May 2004 04:59 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: ed.burnette.REMOVE.THIS.sas.com
"Bjorn Freeman-Benson" <bjorn@superboy.org> wrote in message
news:c86lcd$g2e$1@eclipse.org...
> While I appreciate your comments and I thank you for providing them, I do
> not believe that you represent all the vendors.
You are correct. I shouldn't have said "represent" - I do not "represent"
any vendor in any official capacity. I'm just trying to help out by sharing
my thoughts and experience on this subject "with my vendor hat on", i.e, as
one who works for an ISV that wants to use this technology. I can't speak
for anyone else and I don't know how many people share my opinions on this
(or anything else), so all I can do is argue my points and hope to convince
whoever reads them that they make sense.
--Ed
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