SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives

Date:	Tue, 30 Aug 2005 16:53:21 PDT7
From:	"Lynn H. Maxson" <lmaxson@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	"SCOUG Programming SIG" <scoug-programming@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Alignment of planets

Content Type: text/plain

This month's ACM Queue magazine came packaged with an
advertising supplement for ECLIPSE along with a foldout
(EADL-Eclipse Application Development Life Cycle[no idea
why it isn't EADLC]) graphically in onion-ring manner depicting
the environment from a central kernel containing ECLIPSE
through successive layers (source code management with
supporting vendor names, surrounded by a set of stages
(requirement management, modeling & design, development,
test & performance, deployment, and system management). In
the next layer associated with each stage the set of
supporting vendors. I will bring this in to our September
meeting. I referenced the site (www.eclipse.org) but
apparently advertising occurs separately.

It's almost like deja vu all over again. Another go at AD/Cycle
except with this time around less competitive threats among
the vendors. Notably missing is the data repository though it
is somewhat implicit in the interface standard.

While I can understand why vendors might feel enamored with
it, I don't see the value to users in terms of cost savings with
respect to either software tool costs or
development/maintenance costs. The productivity gain
appears marginal, if at all.

I think we have to have at least a working understanding of it
so that we can intelligently compare it to the choices we
make...if different. If someone thinks this is the silver bullet,
the agua regia, or rosetta stone, I invite them educate us on
the project. If no one feels that way, then together maybe
we can educate ourselves to the necessary extent.

We have some discussions ongoing on the "commercialization"
of open source. Vendors don't care to have some market
segment outside their sphere. As enterprises move more
toward the open source paradigm it seems reasonable that
vendors adapt as well without loss of the profit motive. I
should mention that these ongoing discussions contain
moments of disbelief due philosophical conflicts as well as
some rancor at the "for-profit vendor invasion".

Key here lies the concept of an open source core (ECLIPSE) to
which proprietary (closed source) plugins get attached. I
won't make the argument that it's the best of both worlds or
frankly the best of anything except a continuation of the cost
spiral that plagues software.

One of the functions of this mailing list lies in fomenting
discussions to insure, if anything, that we are at least
communicating clearly among ourselves. We should at least
clear the air prior to our actually collaborating in some (one
or more) open source projects.

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