Central Failing? More FUD?

News.com ran an article on Central, this morning a large section of which is a rehash of Jesse Ezell’s previous pronouncements that “Central is failing”. Not much new information is brought up in the article, although this did catch my eye:

Macromedia hasn’t done enough to establish the benefits of Central to justify the cost of developing for it.

Well, I agree nearly 100% with that. We are building out the platform which is something that is going to take some time. Does the developer’s release have everything that developers want? No, definitely not. That is why we have been very active in talking to developers and asking them what they want. It is why we are working on the next version of Central and adding the features that developers have been asking us for. It is why we are working with developers to help us revise the licensing. Our primary goal is to build a platform that developers want to and can use.

However, this is going to take time, and we definitely realize that. Not only do we have to build the platform, and add the things that developers want, but we also have to make fundamental performance improvements to the player. Moving forward, this is our top priority across the Flash platform. Not only is this vital for developers, but it is also vital for Macromedia as we are building a number of tools and solutions that rely on the platform. However, it will take time to build out the platform, and address these issues.

I do find one thing odd though. If Central is such a failure and non-starter, then why is someone like Jesse Ezell, a Microsoft developer and evangelist, spending so much time and energy talking about and spreading FUD about Central and Flash? Is it because he can look down the road 1 or 2 years and see the real potential of Central?

Of course, we are not there yet, which is one reason we have not pushed Central to the general public. However, I am very excited about the potential that Central offers over the next couple of years. Regardless, one thing is for certain, things are going to get very interesting.