Calming customer's fears of WebObjects/Apple ...

[pcoskren at mac.com (Patrick Coskren)]

On Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 11:00 PM, Ashley Aitken wrote:

> And I would like to hear others!  However, the *biggest* hurdle I face
> when talking with customers is:  What if Apple goes out of business or
> drops WebObjects?
>
> Now I know that both are probably very unlikely to happen, but it's
> possible (eg Newton, Cocoa on Windows)!  And they are thinking long 
> term
> (keeping up with changing world etc).

Personally, I think these days Apple looks more likely to survive than 
Sun!  Really, though, Apple's in a very solid position.  Newton and 
Cocoa were killed in a transitional time for Apple: the very fact that 
WebObjects didn't get the axe then makes it likely that it will 
continue.  Also, point out that both the Apple Store and Apple Music 
Store run on WebObjects: Apple will get screwed as much as your client 
if the product is cancelled!  Last, Apple's been making a Enterprise 
push, albeit a cautious one, with products like the xServe and Mac OS X 
Server, and it seems to be going well.  Where's their motive for 
backing away?

> If only Apple had some written statement that they would ensure the
> technology survives in some way.
>
> For example, if they would guarantee to:
> Sell to someone who will continue development & support
> Escrow the source code for customers
> Open source the source code

Escrow would be great.  That's really all it takes to reassure a lot of 
customers.  I don't see why they don't do it.

On the other hand, once you've got the product on a CD, it's not like 
it'll suddenly stop working even if Apple cancels it.  As far as I can 
tell, Fleet Bank is still using the exact same WebObjects code now that 
they used when I started banking with them back in the nineties.  
(They've wrapped it in a prettier site, but if you look at the frame, 
it's still the same app.)  It's probably WebObjects 3 or something 
using Objective C.  And why not?  It works, they've dealt with the 
bugs, all is cool.  This is why COBOL still gets used.

So, worst case, Apple decides to cancel WebObjects.  First of all, you 
don't lose as much time as you would with another product (and *all* 
products face this risk), because you were able to develop so quickly.  
Second, you can always just ignore the cancellation and keep developing 
with a great product.  Third, because WebObjects is Java and integrates 
with J2EE, you could (if you had to) replace your app component by 
component, with limited risk and downtime, until you had morphed over 
to a completely different technology.  And fourth, odds are excellent 
that The Next Big Thing will come along before WebObjects is at any 
risk, and they'll want to redo the web site from scratch at that point 
anyway.

$.02, anyway.
-Patrick