Hi List:
Does anyone know why Sophie is being ported to Java? In http://sophie2.org/trac/wiki/AboutPage this page , they mention Astea Solutions and their contributed Java codebase...
"Sophie is currently being significantly revised and improved, thanks to a third grant from the Mellon Foundation in October, 2008 and to a Java codebase contributed by Astea Solutions, a company formed to design and develop proprietary and open source electronic publishing products. With this funding, Sophie is not only being rewritten in Java to enhance its stability, but is being transformed from its initial iteration as a powerful multimedia authoring too into a reading and authoring environment that incorporates the recent cultural shifts instigated by social networking and software."
I have not used Sophie myself, but was it unstable?
Thanks!
On 2009-11-04, at 2:01 PM, alesch wrote:
Hi List:
Does anyone know why Sophie is being ported to Java? In http://sophie2.org/trac/wiki/AboutPage this page , they mention Astea Solutions and their contributed Java codebase...
You'll find questions and reasons via http://ask.slashdot.org/story/08/10/03/1547256/How-To-Kill-an-Open-Source-Pr...
On Nov 15th guess we'll see http://www.sophie2.org/users/users_home.html
On 05.11.2009, at 00:25, John M McIntosh wrote:
On 2009-11-04, at 2:01 PM, alesch wrote:
Hi List:
Does anyone know why Sophie is being ported to Java? In http://sophie2.org/trac/wiki/AboutPage this page , they mention Astea Solutions and their contributed Java codebase...
You'll find questions and reasons via http://ask.slashdot.org/story/08/10/03/1547256/How-To-Kill-an-Open-Source-Pr...
In particular, from
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=984735&cid=25252253
"Unfortunately, despite a lot of interest among individual faculty and a few small programs, the widespread institutional adoption necessary to form a viable Sophie 1.0 sustaining community was not happening - due in large part, our inquiries suggested, to lack of interest in supporting an enterprise software application written in Squeak. In the community whose support was most essential to Sophie's survival, everyone wanted a language that was more widely known and used; the largest single group of potential adopters wanted Java [...] The Squeak contractors were understandably unhappy about the move to Java, both because they lost the contract and because they believe in Squeak and want to see it used more widely. We have the greatest respect for their capabilities and their enthusiasm for their community, but our responsibilities to our own institutions, our community, and Mellon require us to give Sophie the greatest possible chance of success."
- Bert -
Bert Freudenberg wrote:
"Unfortunately, despite a lot of interest among individual faculty and a few small programs, the widespread institutional adoption necessary to form a viable Sophie 1.0 sustaining community was not happening - due in large part, our inquiries suggested, to lack of interest in supporting an enterprise software application written in Squeak. In the community whose support was most essential to Sophie's survival, everyone wanted a language that was more widely known and used; the largest single group of potential adopters wanted Java [...] The Squeak contractors were understandably unhappy about the move to Java, both because they lost the contract and because they believe in Squeak and want to see it used more widely. We have the greatest respect for their capabilities and their enthusiasm for their community, but our responsibilities to our own institutions, our community, and Mellon require us to give Sophie the greatest possible chance of success."
Great summary for an issue that I've seen come up several times. A couple of years back for example NASA evaluated Croquet for a project of theirs and decided against it for basically the same reasons: They needed people (other NASA scientists and engineers) who would build add-ons and extensions and requiring those to learn Squeak was perceived a hopeless exercise (and that isn't even mentioning the modularity issues Squeak has).
When we faced the same issue again at Qwaq/Teleplace and this time we decided to "work around" it by providing the extension APIs in Python instead allowing direct access to Squeak. This has served us very well.
This entirely line of arguments is one of the better reasons why "being popular" isn't such a bad thing :-)
Cheers, - Andreas
Em 05-11-2009 15:00, Andreas Raab escreveu:
Bert Freudenberg wrote:
"Unfortunately, despite a lot of interest among individual faculty and a few small programs, the widespread institutional adoption necessary to form a viable Sophie 1.0 sustaining community was not happening - due in large part, our inquiries suggested, to lack of interest in supporting an enterprise software application written in Squeak. In the community whose support was most essential to Sophie's survival, everyone wanted a language that was more widely known and used; the largest single group of potential adopters wanted Java [...] The Squeak contractors were understandably unhappy about the move to Java, both because they lost the contract and because they believe in Squeak and want to see it used more widely. We have the greatest respect for their capabilities and their enthusiasm for their community, but our responsibilities to our own institutions, our community, and Mellon require us to give Sophie the greatest possible chance of success."
Great summary for an issue that I've seen come up several times. A couple of years back for example NASA evaluated Croquet for a project of theirs and decided against it for basically the same reasons: They needed people (other NASA scientists and engineers) who would build add-ons and extensions and requiring those to learn Squeak was perceived a hopeless exercise (and that isn't even mentioning the modularity issues Squeak has).
When we faced the same issue again at Qwaq/Teleplace and this time we decided to "work around" it by providing the extension APIs in Python instead allowing direct access to Squeak. This has served us very well.
This entirely line of arguments is one of the better reasons why "being popular" isn't such a bad thing :-)
Cheers,
- Andreas
From the marketing point of view, Sophie developers decision was suicidal. They decided to release "yet another multimedia authoring suite" in a much more savage commercial environment. They have my sympathy but I see a clouded future for them.
Andreas, your observations are accurate & I agree with them.
About issues involving companies, while squeak and derivatives (Croquet) keep themselves academic there will be little chance of commercial adoption. Just let us put ourselves in the shoes of a decision maker: Java is stable & fully documented & has loads of available developers but if I decide to use squeak I won't have even a real reference book... I'll be in the hands of a professional and if he decides to jump off the project I'd better join him...
Obviously recent discussions regarding to the development of squeak and the "spin-offs" didn't help much. In one hand they project an image of a fractured community (and managers hate this kind of thing) and in the other it reinforces the image of "a beta stuff" (meaning something with specs really open & morphing/mutating development boundaries/implemantations) and managers hate this too...
CdAB
Obviously recent discussions regarding to the development of squeak and the "spin-offs" didn't help much. In one hand they project an image of a fractured community (and managers hate this kind of thing) and in the other it reinforces the image of "a beta stuff" (meaning something with specs really open & morphing/mutating development boundaries/implemantations) and managers hate this too...
both images do reflect reality quite accurately, so there is not much we can do about it...
Stef
At 11:56 PM +0100 11/5/09, Stéphane Rollandin apparently wrote:
Obviously recent discussions regarding to the development of squeak and the "spin-offs" didn't help much. In one hand they project an image of a fractured community (and managers hate this kind of thing) and in the other it reinforces the image of "a beta stuff" (meaning something with specs really open & morphing/mutating development boundaries/implemantations) and managers hate this too...
both images do reflect reality quite accurately, so there is not much we can do about it...
Stef
I downloaded both the authoring and reader versions of Sophie 2 for Mac from http://www.sophie2.org/users/users_home.html and they totally could not load the demo books from http://sophie2.org/trac/wiki/ITERATION_12/Release/UserDocumentation/DemoBooks.
Ken G. Brown
Em 05-11-2009 20:56, Stéphane Rollandin escreveu:
Obviously recent discussions regarding to the development of squeak and the "spin-offs" didn't help much. In one hand they project an image of a fractured community (and managers hate this kind of thing) and in the other it reinforces the image of "a beta stuff" (meaning something with specs really open & morphing/mutating development boundaries/implemantations) and managers hate this too...
both images do reflect reality quite accurately, so there is not much we can do about it...
Stef
Some important steps happened indeed: the trunk is a real advance in direction of a "pro-squeak". Since trunk "release" community has been more cohesive and several "historic" issues have been approached in a very positive way. Things are much better now than they've been 6 months ago. I guess that at some point in foreseeable future most of the issues regarding to "commercial use" of squeak will be dealt with.
CdAB
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