Re: Code donations for RPGUI initiative

[Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>]

Been doing more research on PowerExt this morning and I have to retract a
statement from my previous post.  After digging through the installed
application once it is up and running, there is a ExtJS expandable section
that allows you to get into something called the "PowerExt Working Draft"
which is essentially the programmers manual.  So it appears PowerExt has
some decent documentation, it is just hard to find as it isn't available
from www.PowerExt.com.  You can only get to the full documentation AFTER you
install it on your AS400 and start up the Apache instance.

I am looking for a way to get that manual online for others to review
because it has some good meat to it concerning the explanation of the
framework.

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
http://mowyourlawn.com/blog/


On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 6:38 AM, Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Hi Nathan,
>
> When I am mentioning pricing I am just throwing out average numbers that I
> would guess a framework might cost - not trying to label any one forsale
> framework.
>
>
> > Regarding your point about needing a free toolkit for a "few modern
> looking screens", you don't need a stateless runtime for that.  CGIDEV2,
> PowerExt, and even RPGUI in it's current state would work fine.
>
> True, but all of those frameworks mentioned are over complicated on a
> number of fronts (including RPGUI in it's current state).  At the top of the
> list is the lack of "get me started quickly" documentation that explains how
> things work well and the approach a developer should take to develop
> applications using the framework.  CGIDEV2, IMO, has quite the unorganized
> set of source members and PowerExt suffers a similar issue - once again,
> documentation could address this.  One of my ways of addressing this is the
> articles I am writing for RPGUI that are being published in
> IBMSystemsMag.com.  I am more or less documenting the storyline of RPGUI
> from start to finish so people can have two benefits: 1) understand what
> RPGUI does, 2) understand one approach to creating something for the
> community.  The latter is just as important as the former because I want to
> encourage others to get their code into something like sourceforge.net.
>
> The other complication with all of those frameworks EXCEPT RPGUI is that
> they aren't fully open source.  CGIDEV2 can't have code easily committed to
> it by other parties that I know of, so it will only ever stagnate by being
> under the power of a single person (though I appreciate all the work he has
> done).  PowerExt hasn't taken the time to put the code into a repository
> (i.e. SVN or CVS) even though it is hosted on a GoogleCode site and so the
> same issue applies there.
>
> I am not saying RPGUI is anything to write home about, because really it
> isn't much more significant than other efforts, YET.  But I am laying the
> foundation so it stands a much better chance at "making it big".  I even
> hope that this will create a sort of "competition" between frameworks so
> others can "borrow code" to make theirs better.  The rest of the web
> framework world operates this way, and since there are multiple players
> involved in the RPG+Web framwork world, there's no reason we can't do the
> same :-)
>
> Have I convinced you to donate anything yet? :-)
>
> Aaron Bartell
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 10:45 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
> > > From: Aaron Bartell
> > > I need a solid framework that I can just give away when involved with
> > > customers that need a few modern looking screens and I don't want to
> > > go through the motions of trying to sell them on a $10k framework.
> >
> > Hi Aaron,
> >
> > I should clear up one misconception suggested in your last message.  We
> > don't have a $10K framework.  Actually, we don't charge anything for our
> > framework.  We don't track the number of developers using it.  We don't
> > charge for developer seats.  We don't track the number of applications
> > created by developers.  A few of our partners have deployed hundreds of new
> > applications under it.  So toolkit price is not a barrier for any of our
> > partners.
> >
> > The thing that we do track is the number of concurrently active sessions
> > that end users are running, and charge an annual fee accordingly.  Our
> > session fee ranges from $20 down to $3 per year, depending on the quantity
> > licensed.  The majority of our customers are small organizations that pay
> > $200 annually for a block 10 sessions.
> >
> > I should stipulate that we are not in business to supply developers with
> > tools.  But we occasionally have opportunities to partner with in-house
> > developers and independent contractors to develop new systems which provides
> > a setting for everyone involved to use our toolkit, if interested.
> >
> > Regarding your point about needing a free toolkit for a "few modern
> > looking screens", you don't need a stateless runtime for that.  CGIDEV2,
> > PowerExt, and even RPGUI in it's current state would work fine.
> >
> > Nathan.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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