Introduction
The latest releases of ASP.net 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, and SQL Server 2005 offer greater features for developers and are a co-ordinated release. Despite the cost, the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) of the Visual Studio family is enticing to corporate companies who want to upgrade or work with a consistent platform. Can MySQL/PHP still compete?
Microsoft seemed to be taking so much longer than expected to develop their new version of SQL Server that some were wondering if they had run into problems, like they did with the development of Longhorn/Vista.
But no, they’ve done it. Admittedly behind schedule, but by the time you read this, the Redmond marketing team will be steamrollering your consciousness with a triple-whammy of products - .net 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, and SQL Server 2005. An entire platform of products, released at the same time, and designed to trap corporate executives and financial officers who fall foul of buzzword terms such as ‘Collaboration Through the Lifecycle’ and ‘Shorten the path from vision to deployment.’
You can hear the conversation at Corporate Planning HQ, London already:
Executive: “Collaboration? Shorter Deployment Times? Ah! What that really means is it will be cheaper and easier to develop our internal and external products and toolsets.”
Developer: “But hold on a minute, there are plenty of open-source development platforms out there that can do the same, albeit minus the buzzwords, for a much lower total cost of ownership.”
Executive: “Does it come in a nice boxed DVD as a single platform?”
Developer: “No, that’s the point, you are not tied to particular products; you can pick and choose what is best for your needs.”
Executive: “So we will need to spend more time making decisions on each part of the platform we use? Time is money. The man-hours you use to make these decisions will cost this project money and we will end up over budget.”
Developer: “But you pay me anyway? How can I be costing you money to do what you pay me to do?”
Executive: “It’s all about ROI. So, it’s decided. We’ll buy the Microsoft solution. It’ll be cheaper and easier in the long run.”
Okay, I’m being facile. But the point is that for many, the idea of a consolidated development platform integrating key technologies such as ASP.net 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 will be too difficult to resist.
So where does that leave open-source development options such as PHP, MySQL, Python, Java, PostGreSQL and more? Will they be trampled on? Can they still compete?
The two fundamental sides of the story
From a lay-persons perspective, there are two different teams in this story, and they just keep themselves to themselves, not interfering with each other. ASP.net and SQL Server run on Windows and PHP and MySQL run on Linux. That’s it. Case closed. The use of one particular system does not affect the other, and everyone has their preference, so why worry about it?
Well, we worry about it because it’s not just two sides. In actual fact, it’s a multi-faceted subject. Although some purists may complain or disagree, the fact is you can run a full AMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment on a Windows server.
And more than that, with open-source technologies, you are not tied into a system, or a language, or the need to collaborate using the same tools.
Finally, with the resources that Microsoft has, it is possible for them to develop and market these products simultaneously, and there is no unified product comparison from the FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) sector.
All of these elements could therefore lead the casual observer towards the Microsoft solution without taking the time to consider their other options. As the Executive would say “It comes in a box and it’s ready to use. What more do I need?”
Well, what more do you need?
You need what we all need! Freedom! To have freedom of choice, to be free of licensing fees, to be free to make your own decisions! To sell more locusts! Locusts of all races and creeds! Locusts available at popular prices!
Okay, I’ll take off the beard and try to remember that I am not Woody Allen in Bananas. But the point that I am making is that the keystone of the internet is freedom; freedom to choose and freedom to share.
Locking yourself into a proprietary solution might seem easier and cheaper, but often it’s the exact opposite in the long term. Far too often people have deployed proprietary solutions only to find in the years to come that an excellent idea from the development team can’t be realised or that the new functionality they have developed is more expensive to deploy because of the proprietary platform they are locked into.
Alright, you’ve won me over; I’ll take a look at the other options…
And this is where the AMP (I’ll not include Linux as it is not intrinsic to this argument) platform tends to let itself down. You see, Microsoft has a marketing machine with the approximate budget of Sierra Leone’s GDP.
Can the FOSS community compete with that? I’m sure they can. But whereas the community can work together to develop new products, new features and new innovations at the speed of sound, when it comes to marketing the latest and greatest, they’re way behind.
And where does that leave FOSS technologies?
Essentially, it leaves them way behind the corporate solutions, and the buzzword-driven marketing materials that the corporate companies produce. And more than that, it leaves them working independently, rather than together.
Hold on a minute…
I think I know what you are going to say – that technologies such as Java, PHP and MySQL all DO have commercial and corporate companies behind them, and they are run not only as community providers, but as listed commercial entities.
And you are right…Java is produced by Sun, PHP is managed and developed by Zend, and MySQL AB are the owners and developers of the MySQL RDBMS. They all have their own forms of licensing and pricing that allow them to provide FOSS to the community based on the GPL, whilst still retaining the ability to charge for commercial usage, support and training.
Furthermore, the FOSS community has the *NIX platform to knit everything together at a high level, and Apache to act as the most customisable webserver available.
But…
But. And this is the problem as I see it. The methodology of the FOSS community is to allow developers to work on the projects and products that they want to; to take GPL code and change it and create a new product. To do something different to what is being done now – hopefully in a better or more creative way.
So out in the wild, we have millions of developers, programmers and testers working on their own particular products, working to their own product roadmaps and schedules.
And when this happens, there is no cohesion of process or development between products. For instance, when was the last time that MySQL and Zend released new versions to coincide with each other? The last time that saw a co-ordinated release of the key products in the AMP platform?
Why, when the AMP platform has been so successful in offering cheap access to the Internet and new developers, when FOSS applications can drastically reduce Total Cost of Ownership for companies, and when the major products work with the same core aims, does there continue to be a lack of unification to deliver a combined product that integrates the application sets that developers need?
Because you can do it all yourself, dummy!
Of course, we can do it all ourselves. That’s what we all want to do. We want to install what we want and what we need, choose the apps, languages, database, scripting that we use and configure our own options. Except that the majority of the time, we don’t do this.
Our web servers come installed with the choice of the provider we go with, or we ask for the ‘latest versions’ of the product we want to be installed.
We don’t ask for an environment or a platform, because as such there isn’t one. There is an element of understanding that if you ask for LAMP, then you will get Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. But it’s pretty much guaranteed that if you asked for it again a month later, you would be running with different versions to the initial setup.
Are you talking about standardisation?
Yes, and no. Whilst I think it is important for the customer/user/developer to retain the right to freedom of choice in their environment, I think that there is now a major case for the critical proponents of the AMP tools to work together to bring a unified, cohesive production server platform to the community.
That means a serious, concerted effort by MySQL AB, Zend, Sun, and The Apache Foundation (at a minimum) to produce a combined web environment that is focused on the key tasks needed by developers worldwide, to standardise versions and release dates, to ensure interoperability, and to market this solution as an antidote to the Microsoft Visual Studio platform.
Imagine a free platform that can be installed on *NIX, Solaris, and Windows that includes:
MySQL Enterprise, Zend Platform, Apache, JRE
Along with an IDE that allows you to query databases, write code, change configuration files, manage your webserver and add/remove additional modules as you require them. All backed up by a service and support conglomerate to assist in training, deployment and integration.
An environment that performs upgrades as a whole – that is developed by a committee, that incorporates the best features of each technology, and that can seriously rival a Microsoft platform.
And in doing so, go against everything we believe in…
Not at all, in my opinion. We’re just taking what any Linux distribution does and narrowing the focus. And it’s been done before – you can look at projects such as Xampp (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html) to see the concept in action.
Although there are issues with installing a default compilation (which Apache Friends clearly note), they are working on one of the fundamental issues constricting take-up – “Many people know from their own experience that it's not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl.“
But if the companies developing the parts of the AMP platform embrace the principles of the XAMPP project, then the community is going to become a real rival to the Visual Studio platform, and will be able to compete on a level playing field.
Conclusion
To be fair to Microsoft, they have significantly raised the bar with the Visual Studio platform. To co-ordinate the releases of their keystone technology framework and deploy it in a usable and collaborative platform, whilst satisfying the needs of developers, programmers and architects, is a huge achievement in itself, even if it does not create the impact that they hope for. After all, .NET and SQL Server are still more expensive in the long-term to use and develop with.
But in producing an all-in-one solution, they have kept up with the challenges and competition that the FOSS community creates for them. They have done something that the FOSS community will find much harder to achieve, and in doing so, they are taking the lead.
Of course, price and cost is always going to mean that the FOSS community will stay in touch, but without a co-ordinated reaction and greater co-operation between the major players, the open-source technologies could find themselves being squashed and without influence.
For the benefit of the FOSS community, for the benefit of competition, and ultimately, for the benefit of users, we need to start talking this up. Right now.
_________________________________________
|
Title
Click here to print our PDF pricelist.