Last week Railo contacted me and asked me to raise awareness of a new blog article they had published (their article: "A message from the majority shareholder of The Railo Company"; my initial reaction: "Railo speaks at long last"). I duly mentioned it in an article of my own, as well as a follow-up article ("Questions for Railo") asking some questions that sprang to my mind and a few others from the peanut gallery.
I was hoping Railo might've responded to these questions because their article did kinda elicit more questions than it answered. However now there's been absolute radio silence from them for a week, so this raises even more question marks.
Their article generated quite a backlash from the Lucee community; some sensibly positioned, others not. But awareness definitely was raised! Some of the commentary from Lucee community members positioned Railo's messaging as purely shit-stirring, and solely aimed at spreading FUD regarding Lucee's commercial viability / integrity. My position is that there's no buck to be made in doing that, so that's doubtful... But I gotta say given lack of follow-up from Railo I'm now questioning whether this might actually be the case. In which event it was a fairly irrational thing to do, and it seems to have had the reverse effect in the Lucee community, if anything. There was certainly a feel of rallying around the flag (our circling the wagons?). For example, here's a photo posted from Dev.Objective() (or maybe Into the Box... Not sure):
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| Sourced without permission from Curt Gratz |
It did make me chuckle.
So what do I think now? I think Railo have dealt themselves another credibility hit here, which is unfortunate. That said I'm not yet entirely convinced that this is a case of smoke and no fire. However Railo oughtn't be using the smoke in conjunction with mirrors.
In other news, some people have asked why I promoted the Railo blog article but not the one from Lucee in follow-up ("Railo can get forked (under LGPL)"), the inference being I'm siding with Railo in this. The reason is far simpler than that: it's because Railo asked me to promote their article, and I thought it was interesting news and warranted bring circulated to a wider audience. On the other hand by the time Lucee responded, awareness had already been raised, plus I didn't think their response was anything other than what we'd expect (I mean that in a neutral way). It stood on its own merit and didn't need help from me. Indeed I asked personnel from Lucee if they wanted me to promote it, and they didn't think it seemed necessary.
Whose side am I on then? Not Railo's. Not Lucee's. Not Adobe's. Not... hohoho... BlueDragon's. I'm on the side of the CFML community (in general, not necessarily all specific individuals). I'll talk about anything I find interesting or relevant, and I'll put my own editorial spin on it. I do kid myself that my position is usually an informed one (and I'll correct it when I find out it's not), but depending on the subject material not everyone will agree or like it. If you want "opinions" that are easy to agree with all the time... there are other blogs or there which will better suit your. But this is probably not the one for you.
So... Railo... what gives, eh? You're kinda letting yourselves down here about as fast as your former community is offering you cutlery-based suggestions.
Righto.
--
Adam
(PS: I wrote most of this on my phone on the train, so apologies for any autocorruptions I haven't spotted & fixed. Lemme know if you see any)