CFML community working well together

G'day:
I've not much to say here, but I'm just really pleased how the CFML community - especially Dom Watson and Sean Corfield - have been chipping away and planning out and discussing a ColdFusion enhancement request Alex Skinner raised last night (Allow additional attributes to be added to CFPARAM tags).

I put my usual cynical / jaded oar in (that said, I stand by what I say!), but Dom and Alex have been having a lot of discussion today (not just on the bug tracker, but on the CFML Slack channel too), and it's great work.

Well done, community.

--
Adam

CFML: ways to help or be helped with ColdFusion and Lucee

G'day:
This article has been inspired by "reports of the death of the House of Fusion CFML forums are not greatly exaggerated". I dunno of anyone has been able to reach whoever represented the human manifestation of HoF, or just the continued radio-silence has been inferred as demise.

Russ from CFMLDeveloper has started a new Google Group to fill the void left by HoF disappearing:

For those that do not know, the well known and long running House Of Fusion and CF-Talk mailing list are now dead.... http://t.co/fYlDFKFVgr

— cfmldeveloper (@cfmldeveloper) August 25, 2015

And, indeed here they are @ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/cfmldeveloper:

Dom Watson also quickly reminded people that there's the #CFML Slack channel too:

For those that did not know, there is a new home for #cfml developers on Slack 700+ members http://t.co/2cKFtAhccg https://t.co/uZtTyg16Pj

— Dominic Watson (@dom_watson) August 25, 2015

If I was being uncharitable, I'd observe that Dom's choice of words there might sound a bit dismissive of Russ's efforts, for some reason. But I'd never be uncharitable.

This Railo v Lucee thing: a well-balanced reaction (from someone else)

G'day:
I had a response to make to a comment this evening, but Ron Stewart beat me to it, saying pretty much what I'd've said, except better. And more politely. I wasn't going to bother being polite.

'ere' 't'is.

It's in response to Dom's comment, which was a slightly befuddling reaction to my article this morning, "Questions for Railo". Dom's post seemed to take offence at the fact I delivered inconvenient information, and I have an opinion which is contrary to the zeitgeist. And that I have derided some of the less coherent reaction I've been seeing. Which is odd, cos he's read this blog before.

Anyway, I was gonna reply after work, but I've been trumped by Ron who's written what I would have said (like I said above).

@Dominic: I'm not one for putting words in Adam's mouth (seems dangerous to me) but I too was a little surprised by how some people responded either on Twitter or in the comments on the Google Groups posting in a manner that either

(a) seemed (to me) to lose sight of what I thought was the primary basis for the disagreement between 4FTI and the people behind the Lucee project: some sort of contractual agreement regarding IP rights, or

(b) automatically assumed that the entity behind the post was automatically wrong, without grounds for their position, some sort of bad guy, or out specifically to harm the Lucee project (they may be any or all of those things... or they may not be).

There's a great deal about all of this that we on the outside simply don't know at this point in time, and to automatically assume that the entity behind the post on the Railo blog has no basis for their position and/or for addressing what they perceive as a grievance or breach of contract through litigation is probably unwise. The claims made by the entity behind the blog post on the Railo site may be without merit... or they may not be. We just don't know.

As I posted on Twitter, the underlying disagreement between the two sides in this case is troubling to me (I used the word "disturbing" in my tweet) because it, at best, will likely be a distraction for continued development of the Lucee project until it is resolved. I also noted that that the cynical part of me was sort of expecting this given the protracted silence from the Railo side since the Lucee project began... given what we had publically heard about financial backing for and commitment to the long-term future of CFML through Railo, it seemed quite likely to me that the entities backing Railo would be quiet that long if they were trying to figure out what this meant for their investment and their future... maybe I was reading too much into the silence. I think we now have some idea of where they stand.

I saw some of the reaction as a surprising rush to judgment, given how little any of us know about the circumstances behind the principals leaving the Railo side, any contractual agreements they may or may not have had with the Railo side, conversations that may have occurred between the two sides since they left the Railo project as they two sides may or may not have attempted to come to some sort of agreement on points of dispute. I don't think we know enough at this point to start talking about who's right, wrong, good, bad, or anything else in this case.

Does all of this help the CFML community? Or Railo? Or Lucee? No, almost certainly not... but neither does our jumping to conclusions about "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "bad" in situations where we aren't currently--and may never be--privy to all of the relevant facts.

I think Adam is/was doing the same thing to the CFML community that he often does with the vendors: taking them to task for what he sees as questionable reasoning. I don't see his position as "pandering" or even an extreme case of playing the devil's advocate. But that's just my perspective...

I'm curious about the answers to some of the questions he's posed here (particularly the forward-looking ones), and to see how this plays out.

Dom posts interesting feedback

G'day:
I was gonna just bury this as a response to a comment in the original article, but I've decided Dom's comment is really excellent, so I'm promoting his comment & my feedback to be an article.

This was in reaction to my "Regarding codes of conduct and the nature of forum participation" article from a few days ago.

A quick look at WireBox

G'day:
A coupla days ago I had "A quick look at DI/1", after having my interest piqued by Chris' presentation "Dependency Injection with DI/1". That went quite smoothly, so to kill some time after CFCamp, I decided to do the equivalent exercise with WireBox.

Ortus does what Adobe / Railo ought to have done...

G'day:
Luis & Brad (and Alex from Pixl8) have been offering teasers for CommandBox for a while now: Luis first showed me at CF.Objective(), and had been talking about it before then. Today they released a "trailer" for it: "Teaser Video for CommandBox". Go watch it.

London Railo Group: but wait... there's MoreBox

G'day:
Blimey... not one but two London Railo Group meetings next week. On Friday Pixl8 are hosting Luis, who's gonna be showing off CommandBox, which is a CLI for CFML. As well as that Alex (and/or Dom?) are going to be demoing the revitalised PresideCMS. Details here: "Luis Majano (New Coldbox and CommandBox) , Pixl8 PresideCMS Sneak Peak".

I have to concede I don't have content to manage, so CMSes aren't something that're on my radar, but Alex has shown me bits 'n' pieces of PresideCMS, and I am really really impressed with what he and Dom have done with it. It's a cliche, but it really seems like they've taken CMSes to the next level.

Luis showed me a bit of CommandBox at CF.Objective(), and it looks really bloody excellent. Definitely covering territory that the CFML platforms themselves should already be covering as far as package management and CLI goes.

I really wish I could be at this presentation too, but I'll be over in Ireland seeing my boy, and that's a lot more fun than CFML stuff. Sorry guys ;-)

But I urge you to sign up for this meeting as well (as the Railo one on Tues: "London Railo Group: Gert's over").

Righto.

--
Adam

CFCamp: PresideCMS goes open source

Guten Tag
(and that's the end of the German... I'm over-extending myself even with that much!)

Alex Dom and I flew from Gatwick to Munich late yesterday afternoon, touching down mid-evening. An hour or so later we were wandering around Germering in the middle of the night with Alex going "I think it's down here... just a bit more... further... still... I think..." (where "it" was their hotel... I was staying at a different one). But after a km or so stroll, we found their hotel, dropped their bags off, and went back to downtown Germering for a meal. Most things were closed (10pm, sure... but it was Saturday night?!), but we found a very traditional-seeming restaurant - Zum Griabig'n - which was still open and serving various renditions of flesh and potatoes, so we settled in. The food was hearty and the beer was perhaps one more than I needed (two at Gatwick, two on the plane, one over dinner), but all was good. I slunk back to my hotel a coupla km down the road, and collapsed in a heap.