I was bummed to read Dave Winer’s comments about Macromedia’s position
vis a vis “BigCo’s”. The two primary issues - the mass community of
scripting-level developers, and Macromedia’s efforts around web services
interoperability - actually underscore a philosophy that I think is
shared by Macromedia and Dave, and which is actually quite the opposite
of BigCo-obsessing.
The point about scripting-level developers is simple: the vast majority
of people building web applications are using scripting languages, not
big enterprise architectures; a huge number are using VBScript/Jscript
in ASP; lots of use ColdFusion; tons use PHP, some Perl, some Python,
and on and on. This is a good thing. Scripting is pragmatic and
cost-effective. Our mission with MX is to empower these people. I’m
not sure how this is paying homage to BigCo’s.
The second item, on my comments on working with Microsoft on web
services interoperability was merely a matter of fact. Yes, people
(unfortunately) equate web services with .NET, and its important as a
vendor to convey support for the same standards Microsoft is supporting.
However, it’s also worth noting that Microsoft has been incredibly
active and supportive of efforts to drive interoperabiity, along with
dozens of others in the community.
The related comment was about our approach here, which is decidely not BigCo - we’ve been actively contributing to the Apache Axis project, an open source platform for web
services. We’re working with the community at large to help make this all a reality.
posted by Jeremy Allaire
