[thelist] Cold Fusion

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On Friday 2004 May 14 13:43, Adrian Gonzales wrote:
> Proprietary:
> Unless you are an open source evangelist, proprietary doesn't mean
> crap when you are just a web designer. Of those who use PHP, how many
> actually go in and write their own code into the server and then
> recompile it? Not too many. So who cares if you get to compile it
> your self? Or that you have the source code?

Where's the version of Cold Fusion for, say, OpenBSD running on a 
SPARC-based computer? What, there isn't one?

With free software (I don't really prefer to use the term "open source") 
this isn't a problem, grab the source code and compile it. That's what 
free software is about, freedom. You can do what you want, and hire 
your own freelance programmers to make the changes you want. With Cold 
Fusion, if it's not in Macromedia's best interests to change CF to do 
what *you* want, you're stuck. If CF goes end-of-life for good 
(unlikely today, but entirely possible in the future if Macromedia 
considers it in their best interests to do so) and your site still uses 
it, you're also stuck, and in this case it means potentially redoing an 
entire site. I mean, I guess it's great if you're the one redoing all 
these sites, but for the poor people that have to pay for it? Not a 
good prospect at all.

> Platform Compatability:
> True, PHP and Perl can run on just about anything that can compile.
> CF isnt that lucky. It used to be limited to Windows, but not
> anymore. CF can now run on Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP_UX, Mac OSX,
> and AIX. So, just about everything on the web server market.

(BTW, it's GNU/Linux, Linux is just the kernel, GNU is the rest of the 
OS.)

I don't see any of the BSD family mentioned there (OpenBSD would be my 
first choice for a Web server, with FreeBSD a close second and a 
hardened Debian GNU/Linux a distant third), and I would not want to 
risk instability by using GNU/Linux binary emulation on a server, nor 
should I have to.

> Dreamweaver:
> Dreamweaver works awesome with CF. It works really good. Whether you
> use the design view or the code view. It just streamlines so many
> things. It's as good, if not better, than any IDE for php.

Not that surprising, considering it's another Macromedia product. Of 
course, my Dreamweaver experience was rather short-lived (for more than 
one reason).

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn