OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/21578/Rhodes_Mobile_App_Development_Framework Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:25:00 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Startup http://osnews.com/thread?365815 http://osnews.com/thread?365815 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 Thu, 28 May 2009 17:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vivainio) Comments RE: Startup http://osnews.com/thread?365817 http://osnews.com/thread?365817 It is open source, which mitigates that possibility somewhat. Thu, 28 May 2009 17:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David) Comments RE[2]: Startup http://osnews.com/thread?365819 http://osnews.com/thread?365819 From TFA:

Rhodes is dual-licensed under the GPL and a commercial license. Developers who open-source their apps may use the GPL version of the framework and pay no fees. Commercial developers may license the commercial version of Rhodes and negotiate either a revenue share or per-seat fee with Rhomobile.


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". Thu, 28 May 2009 18:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vivainio) Comments RE[3]: Startup http://osnews.com/thread?365822 http://osnews.com/thread?365822 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. Thu, 28 May 2009 18:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David) Comments really good? http://osnews.com/thread?366110 http://osnews.com/thread?366110 Pre has similar idea, and all stuff are HTML + Javascript. And more, maybe most of app now are running at web. So device user maybe prefer to visit app through web using Browser. Sat, 30 May 2009 00:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fan_fan) Comments RE[4]: Startup http://osnews.com/thread?366139 http://osnews.com/thread?366139 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 Sat, 30 May 2009 04:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (adamblum) Comments RE[5]: Startup http://osnews.com/thread?366161 http://osnews.com/thread?366161
Hmmm... in 2009, is the value of GPL licensed software really still being questioned?


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. Sat, 30 May 2009 08:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vivainio) Comments