David T. Lewis schrieb:
On Mon, Jul 04, 2005 at 08:50:32AM +0200, Franz Josef Konrad wrote:
- I was impressed what Squeak can deliver *today* for some of my
business needs. But there is no central entry point (or I haven’t found) where I could find all the answers to my questions on the web. Probably somebody else would have give up searching soon (or immediately).
Regardless of one's point of view regarding Squeak for commercial purposes, I think it's a good thing to support the commercial Smalltalks.
100% agree.
For example, a Seaside business application can be
delivered on either VisualWorks or Squeak. It takes nothing away from Squeak at all if you recommend VisualWorks for a project like this, and you can of course refer to the very professional-looking Cincom web site.
In my opinion it would be very bad for Squeak to be seen as a competitor to the commercial systems, and very good for Squeak if the commercial systems grow in credibility thanks to the positive contributions of the Squeak community.
Isn't this a hen egg problem? What's easier to achieve? Growing Squeak or growing the commercial Smalltalk systems first?
Dave
I don't see Squeak as a competitor to the commercial Smalltalk systems. I want to see low barriers for people to use Smalltalk doing business. And with a free product like Squeak you have an attractive choice.
If it is possible to grow the the number of people who use Squeak it will IMO automatically raise the number of people who will use a commercial Smalltalk systems. If you believe this isn't possible then of course you will have a cannibalism effect that Squeak takes market share from the commercial systems. But perhaps I'm too optimistic?!
Dave, so would you argue not to use Squeak for business projects? Using a commercial Smalltalk system instead?
regadrs, Franz Josef