Here at OSNews we believe that in many ways the future of computing is mobile. It's also a pretty exciting field, since it's been so dynamic over the past ten years, with platforms rising and falling, and no one vendor ever rising to dominate. But this "wild west" market can be a real source of anxiety for mobile-oriented software developers, who have to gamble on which platform to support, or go to the extra effort of placing multiple bets. Maybe it's not a huge problem for hobbyists or developers of simplistic apps, but as the devices get more powerful, it's enabling the development of more powerful apps. If only these developers could develop a sophisticated mobile app that could be deployed on all the major mobile platforms. Now they can. There's an open mobile framework called Rhodes that allows developers to write an app that will deploy on iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android.
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Member since:
2008-12-26
Seems like the whole stack is a product of a startup.
Translation: once the startup loses interest/resources for supporting a particular platform, your application is screwed.
Relevant (old) article on sharecropping:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
Member since:1997-10-01
Member since:2008-12-26
From TFA:
So, it's not really *that* open source (where the development happens by/for the community). This is similar to the scheme used by Qt (in the past) / Mysql (which got them no end of ill will). Now, I don't know what the exact value proposition of this project is compared to, say, what Qt used to have, but certain discretion is advised if you are expecting a "free lunch".
Member since:1997-10-01
I agree that the dual-license approach does have some major drawbacks for the developer compared to a pure open source license. However, it still provides a substantial peace-of-mind boost on the abandonware front. If a dual-license company goes kaput, it's highly likely that the source code will live on, and you won't be left completely in the lurch. However, the usefulness of the source code will depend to a large extent on whether that company has successfully cultivated a lively open source community. Just slapping "open source" on your product doesn't magically turn it into Apache.
Member since:2009-05-30
Hmmm... in 2009, is the value of GPL licensed software really still being questioned? Qt and MySQL are huge boons to the development community, that I've benefitted from on projects many times. But valuable GPL software is all over the industry. If you believe in open source, by all means, open source your app. And then you owe nothing to use that GPL licensed product. Not sure if understand what your issue.
Regarding being a startup, the big open source wins (perhaps with the exception of Apache) are primarily from startups. PHP's 8 millions developers: a startup. MySQL millions of users: a startup, Qt: a startup. I'm actually continually surprised how infrequently big companies (even ones that are perceived as benevolent) contribute to open source, despite the massive value some of them garner from it.
But any such startup's backers just have to be prepared to be in it for the long haul (as in as much as ten years). Any intelligent startup's founders won't go into the deal without that commitment. I have seen plenty of underfunded, undercommitted startups with proprietary stuff, but I haven't seen any open source companies recently without backers prepared for the necessary timeframe.
I agree with what was said about the importance of the development community. Rhomobile has a bunch of great devs in the community contributing already and we hope you guys decide to be part of that.
Cheers,
- Adam
Member since:2008-12-26
GPL licensed libraries (and commercial ones) have always been questioned, I don't recall that changing recently ;-). I guess the deal is that GPL / commercial is problematic because it's still a "business" more than "collaboration" of interested parties.
I don't think there are any GUI libraries that rely on this scheme anymore, for example.
Member since:
2009-05-29