ColdFusion 9 info
I read between the lines of this post by ColdFusion's new Product Manager and I think I've extracted a couple of facts. One answers a question I've been puzzling over for a long time, and the others are just interesting tidbits.
- ColdFusion 9 will NOT be free.
- ColdFusion 9 is close to beta (or already there).
- Bolt releases will be faster than ColdFusion releases.
Here's how I got there. For the first point, we need only read this statement from Adam's post: "...your expectations are different for [Adobe ColdFusion] than they are for our open source competition. When you pay for something, you expect more." He didn't come out and say that they will charge for CF 9, but I think that statement makes it clear that they are going to charge for either ColdFusion itself, or the new IDE (Bolt), or both.
The second point was extracted from this statement: "This means that if a feature isn't completed by the first beta, you don't ship it." Now, you have to read the rest of the post to understand that he is talking about dropping features from ColdFusion/Bolt (to ship it sooner and at higher quality than if they kept the features in this release). So the assumption is that since they are dropping features, and Adam says that you have to do this if the features aren't completed by the Beta, then the CF team is probably at or close to a beta release.
The third point is just a simple statement that Adam made, no reading between the lines: "Desktop software like Bolt can be rev'd a lot faster than server software can. Meaning, you probably won't have to wait as long as you do in between ColdFusion releases..." Now, we can't ignore that very important word "probably" in there, but it's still interesting, and of course it makes sense.
This brings to mind another question: will the community be able to easily add "plugins" into Bolt? One would think so, because it's built on Eclipse. But the question will be how much Adobe helps or hinders such plugins, and whether or not it will be easy to bolt stuff in (pardon the pun). :)
Jake Munson
36 Yrs old
I dont have a problem with this, but they should have two editions.
1. A free edition that is limited to perhaps X concurrent requests, so fine for low volume
2. A paid editiion that is not limited and is full featured.
They need to scrap the Standard / Enterprise rubbish.
A lot of people I know have dropped Enterprise because its too expensive. I also am aware of a lot of usage of Enterprise with non legit keys, why? Because its too expensive. Someone might buy one key then have a second server and just install it again, another 7k is just too much.
The one edition should be priced around 1-2k IMHO.
So .NET, PHP & Java must be totally rubbish given they are free.
I would be happy to pay more than standard but less than enterprise and get rid of the differences in versions.
Yes, Adobe CF Enterprise is insanely priced. In business if you focus/help the small guy and try to make money off the big guys, you will prosper. Otherwise, you will get what you want in the short term but eventually Railo...will win. Totally loving Railo's concept.
I have thought the same thing myself for years (a free version without all the expensive 3rd party addons). However, I don't think Adobe will ever do it. You have to look at Adobe's culture, which is mostly full of large expensive software, withOUT any free version. Yes, I'm aware of Flex and it's pricing model (and I have trumpeted that MANY times in arguments such as these), but it falls on deaf ears.
My honest opinion: Ben Forta, Adam Lehman, and all the CF engineers like the fact that there is no free version. Why? Well, for starters, they have been arguing against a free version for years (decades?), and their stubbornly ignoring the writing on the wall. But I think the bigger reason is that they're scared. Even though Flex and other non-Adobe products have proved that one can successfully market and sell a product that has both a free and paid version, they are afraid it won't work for CF. And they have nice comfortable jobs making a lot of money at Adobe, so why threaten that with a potentially risky move like giving away CF Standard?
Of course, I think they are being shortsighted, but at the same time, look at Apple for comparison. They are not going to beat Microsoft at the operating system game anytime soon. But they don't care! They are making a LOT of money selling overpriced products to people that don't care about price. Yes it's a niche, but Apple is happy to be in that niche. I believe Ben Forta and friends have the same mindset about CF as Apple does about their computers.
The best thing they could do is enable volume and enterprise licensing, get rid of the per processor licensing, and really try to compete with the J2EE servers like WebSphere and Oracle rather than the free stuff like PHP and Tomcat. They really should push the J2EE capabilities so the Java developers use it to deploy their apps and Adobe can hope those developers use more and more CF rather Java once they see how cool it is. So you sort of sneak it in to where it wasn't before. Also, businesses and the Government do not want open source free stuff because it's a liability and free stuff doesn't come with quality support (if it has any at all). IBM charges 10 times for their WebSphere product even though it does merely a fraction of what CF server does, and they are expanding their business everywhere based on the SOA model. Oracle does enterprise licensing so you can install it as much as you want, which in turn makes the whole organization use Oracle App Server - making the money for support and increasing users base.
It's about market penetration and you don't penetrate by giving it away and let it hang out for people to grab it - you do it by pushing it hard ;)
I just went over all the spec's in CF9 beta release and couldnt get excited about one single thing. Now dont get me wrong, I love CF and have been developing since CF4, however I see CF9 a release for major "power users" and not much for the "Average User" that currenlty is on CF8.
Even if CF9 were released free, I am not sure, with what I know so far that I would upgrade and risk the tweaking/adjustments (time) that may be required with my code.
Perhaps CF9 is a bridge to something bigger and better in CF10 or 11. Just browsing the "whats new in CF9" it would appear this is a release that will make all the gurus, power users, very happy, But for the average user it is useless for the most part and I for one will sit pretty with CF8.
Coldfusion Builder is something that deserves more excitment over CF9.
I can't blame Adobe for charging for their products but it certainly does make it harder to sell small businesses on the CF platform.