Railo: An Announcement
However, recently I've found projects and situations where ColdFusion *should* have been the right choice, but wasn't. And given that I've been programming in it for ten years, I find that very sad indeed.
I think for too long we've sat back and waited for Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe to add the features we want to our favorite language and that has given the open source JVM language alternatives like Groovy, JRuby, Scala and Clojure a real edge in terms of speed of development, frequency of release cycles and relevance to developers.
Adobe has to focus on adding "manager features" to each release (hey, they want to sell your boss something for $7500 a server, they have to give them a reason to write the check!). Many of those "manager features" are also great for us as developers, but with the best will in the world, Adam and his team in India can only do so much in a given release cycle (although I believe Centaur is going to be the best developer release in years - and that is saying something after the last couple).
I decided that rather than complaining or just leaving the language entirely, I'd try to do something about this and Gert Franz offered me an opportunity that I couldn't resist when he suggested that I head up Railo operations in the 'states.
This month I will be founding Railo US and will head up all business operations for Railo in the US. Throughout the week I'll lay out in more detail why I think that Railo is the best thing that has happened to CFML in a long time and why I chose to be involved with it.
Here's to interesting times :-)
Founding Railo US sounds like a treat. Cheers.
That's awesome.
I've been "super-interested" in Railo since they first announced they were going open source.. and now with Mark Drew heading Railo UK.. and now Railo US (with you)..
Very very cool. I really think that Railo is certainly one of the best things to happen to CFML.
Congrats!!
Gert is making some wise decisions.
http://www.markdrew.co.uk/blog/post.cfm/cfml-drink...
I'm glad to see you're not leaving the CFML community, but sorry to see you're burning bridges with Adobe. I've always valued your opinion and wish you would have taken a greater role in the direction of ColdFusion. Alas, as a friend, I wish you the best of luck in your new venture.
Since Adobe took over ColdFusion, the community has grown by more that 350k developers. We are going to stay true to the values that have served this community for the last 14 years.
I apologize for the language but as a Priest I can say stuff like that.
Congratulations Peter!!! This is AWESOME news!!!
As an OS fan for years I'm so excited to see both OpenBD and Railo moving in such positive directions! I think it's really going to strengthen CFML as a language in general.
I think even Adobe will benefit from these changes. Competition at any level is a good thing IMO and I think this may force Adobe to sit up and pay attention a bit...
2nd, I agree with Jim, I think having an free open-source cfml engine is totally beneficial for the language. We've been getting our butts kicked by php, java, and .net for years. While things have improved since Adobe took over, the biggest complaint I have ever received from clients was about the price. And for small web applications, I tend to agree with them. Railo solves that problem.
Eventually some railo clients are going to want greater flex connectivity or some other feature that Adobe ColdFusion may perform better then Railo. It will be much easier for Adobe to grab customers from open source CFML users then it will be for them to grab them from PHP.
@Adam - Thats great news about the +350k developers in only 3 years. Do you have more info on this, demographic information, etc? Also, do you have stats for other languages and how much they grew/contracted in the same time period?
I'll be posting my thoughts on the Adobe / Railo issue in the next day or two (I think it's a good thing but want to articulate *why* in some detail). I already use both ColdFusion and Railo at work, for different things - and Railo on my blog - so I definitely think the market's big enough for both (plus OpenBD / BlueDragon of course).
The official Adobe attitude revealed.
Yes, I was also amazed to discover that Adobe isn't a charity working for the good of the planet, but a business that sells server and desktop solutions. I'd never have guessed.
I think for too long we've sat back and waited for Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe to add the features we want to our favorite language and that has given the open source JVM language alternatives like Groovy, JRuby, Scala and Clojure a real edge in terms of speed of development, frequency of release cycles and relevance to developers.
One of the great things about CFML is that you can extend the language yourself by use of the many ways there are to do that now. I personally can't think of anything I want that isn't already available as a custyom tag or CFC or Java object. I do want it to be faster. Gert tells me that Railo.