I'm going to get this out quickly without any analysis (I've not even finished reading it!), but Railo - yeah Railo, not Lucee - have just posted this on their blog ("A message from the majority shareholder of The Railo Company"). The whole thing warrants reading and digesting, but this is they key section:
What this means for Lucee
Again, we support the spirit and intent of the Lucee initiative, although we fail to see the advantage of another CFML platform. However, the use and development of Railo to release what is now being “packaged” as Lucee 5 was not authorized by TRC and, therefore, remains the property of TRC.
For this reason, we are compelled to provide notice that any use of Railo by Lucee or by its membership may constitute an unlawful infringement of TRC’s intellectual property rights. We strongly urge you or your customers to request that Lucee and its founders warrant that nothing contained in any Lucee release is subject to claims from third parties including TRC and that all IP is free and clear to Lucee. We are confident that no such warranty can or will be provided.
All of these internal issues will take time to sort out and we will try to keep you updated throughout.
Hmmm.
My initial reaction is that one would be foolhardy to run with Lucee whilst there's clearly some issues to "iron out". It might end up just being an agreement being made with TRC to allow them to distribute Lucee. Or it might mean "Lucee" is not allowed to exist, legally. I think this is up in the air at the moment.
That said: I'm no lawyer, so what do I know.
Update:
Alex has pointed this out:This isn’t Railo speaking this is another TRC shareholder and the article title should reflect that, [...] they are a majority shareholder [...] TRC's other shareholders don’t agree with the position being taken?(full context is in his comment below. I have edited that down, and this expresses his intent, but not his exact wording).
My reaction to that is this:
It's the Railo blog and they're talking about Railo stuff, so that's "Railo speaks..." in my books. I'm not that fussed by who owns what shares, and realistically I think this messaging *is* the official word re Railo whether all share holders agree or not.
TBH, I'm not sure this hair-splitting is helpful or meaningful, but I've now had this conversation three times with various people, so I figured I should get my reaction front and centre.
One thing I do know... this squabbling between Railo & Lucee is not helpful to anyone in the CFML community (except perhaps Adobe). And I say that in a non-partisan way. I don't know enough to know who's the right or the wrong party in any of this.
I think the body left worst off is the CFML community though.
Update, after some thought:
These are my initial thoughts, as posted in a comment on Railo's blog article:Very interesting news! Not entirely helpful from the perspective of the continuity of the CFML community, but interesting nevertheless.
What would be *best* is if you @ TRC and those @ LAS could swallow their egos and their differences, ditch Lucee, and go back to just doing Railo.
I'm fairly certain that won't happen though :-/
Best of luck, and I will definitely be "watching this space"!
What are your own thoughts on any of this?
--
Adam
