In an unexpected move, Adobe have released their ColdFusion product to the open source community. In the associated press release Adobe stated the following reasons for the move:
“Adobe have always tried to bring a better and more capable product to the users. In recent years, however, improvements have plateaued. With the release of OpenBlueDragon and Railo Open Source there are thousands of people out there using those two products. This has made it increasingly difficult to justify the ongoing high cost of developing the ColdFusion Server on our own. In the end it’s the user who suffers.
The logical conclusion is to open up the problem and try to crowd source the server in the hope that the developer community picks it up.
We may see some teething problems at the start, but we think it will become the standard and everyone will work together to make it the best CFML server out there.”
However, some industry experts think this is just another example of Adobe trying to secure its position in the market. A source that wanted to remain anonymous said;
“Adobe has always tried to tight their customers to their ColdFusion Server offering. Some may start to question what value Adobe are adding; if they don’t control the core engine of ColdFusion server anymore; how can they make millions with open sourcing the server now?”
For Railo this move could as well mean the end of their open source offering. This has come to no better time, since Railo just released their Railo Open Source version today, the exact day that Adobe has decided to release their ColdFusion Server as open source. Might this be another move from the “giant” Adobe to control the CFML market?
Railo were contacted; and declined to comment, except to state that Railo considered the CFML server market dead and that building extensions and hosting for CFML projects were the tools of the future.
OpenBlueDragon has released a statement that they have studied the algorithm and have noted some bizarre elements; for instance is the CFDocument syntax, a feature that will create PDF documents from any web site, based on open source libraries. One might wonder, why this is so, since Adobe is the creator of PDF.
Adam Lehman, Adobe’s ColdFusion Product Manager has apparently stepped down in what the company say is a completely unrelated matter. However, inside sources say he is absolutely against the move and feels that Adobe have ‘thrown in the towel’.
