Well: what a flurry of hysteria we had yesterday, eh? (if you missed it: "Railo speaks at long last", then go to the Lucee Google Group or Twitter for more reaction). I can't say I was particularly impressed with some quarters of the CFML community with their froth-based conspiracy theorisation, but I think this reflected mostly on themselves more than anyone else. I'm also surprised at the road from Palm Sunday-esque adulation to shrieks of "Crucify Them!" Railo have apparently transgressed over the last few months. We've definitely split from the Judean People's Front to create the People's Front of Judea, it seems.
Still... There's some sensible questions to be asked off the back of all this. Some of these come from me, some of them are questions others have asked which seem to have merit (at least to some degree).
So Railo / The Railo Company / 4FTI... some questions:
- How come it's taken so long to say anything? It's not like no-one was asking, and not a skerrick until now. That certainly left the Railo/CFML community reeling, and definitely played into Lucee's hand. Certainly I felt Railo had just been shelved. What gives?
- And why now? I mean as opposed to last week or last month, or next week, etc? What was the turn of events that had you conclude "right: better release some news"?
- What actually was the news? The article seemed to focus on perceived (or real) wrong-doing on the part of named individuals who had been involved in Railo, and now aren't involved in Railo. Some leaving to join/start Lucee. Some people have seen this as an exercise in smearing Lucee (for reasons I can't personally see the point of, so I'm skeptical of that), more than announcing the continuation of Railo... which should have been the news, but was relegated to a footnote. So much so I know a few people didn't even notice it. So what was the message here?
- In hindsight, do you think it was a good position to take to name-and-shame your former colleagues? It might have been factual, but I'm not sure it was helpful to your cause.
- You're basically accusing your former colleagues is stealing code, right? Aren't you risking defamation if that's not proven to be a fact?
- Does this mean you are in litigation with LAS, or individuals named in your blog post?
- You've confused a bunch of people (who didn't read closely) in that they think you claimed Lucee weren't allowed to fork the OSS/LGPL-licensed Railo code. Now you didn't say this, but perhaps you could clarify the issue (using smaller words, perhaps)?
- The blog article was posted on the Railo blog, and pretty much claimed to be speaking on behalf of Railo. Yet at least one partner in TRC had piped up to challenge this (Malcolm O'Keeffe of Blue River / Mura posted on the Lucee Google Group). So... Is there a unified message re Railo from Railo?
- What is the relationship between TRC and 4FTI? I couldn't find much info on 4FTI, other than the link above and this domain registration info. It's somehow related to Prisma-IT.
- If Railo is arising - phoenix-like - who's doing the development? Can they introduce themselves to the Railo community? Or are you still at the stage of jump-starting the project and looking for developers to replace the departees?
- Building on the previous, what's the plan to resume bug fixes, features, releases? Do you have a road map?
- (From Mike Hnat) If/when you release Railo 5, will it be a paid-for product?
- (Also from Mike) Can you please explain to the punters the difference between open-source source code, and paid-for software which embeds that OS source code (because a lot of people really don't get the difference between "code" and "product")?
- (From Dom Watson) To clarify, are you planning to release the next version of Railo as a purely commercial product? If not, and you are/have been planning commercial extensions on top of a free and open source platform - which features that have made it into the Lucee 5 beta were intended to be commercial?
- How do you intend to re-engage the Railo community? Basing my observations solely on the Google Group, and former keen pundits from the Railo community, most everyone seems to have jumped to Lucee, or jumped off the train entirely. I guess the CFML community is known for not participating, so this might not be representative of the Railo install base.
That's all I can think of at the moment,but I'm sure more will spring to mind. If you have any questions of your own, add a comment and if they're good 'uns, I'll hoist them up into the main article.
Righto.
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Adam