Bluedragon Licence change
I've been fortunate in the past to always work with companies who purchased the Macromedia Adobe Coldfusion licence.
But recently I was asked if a CF enviorment could be set up cheaply (i.e. as cheap as ASP, PHP)? Before anyone jump in with the usual argument of "Well for ASP you need a Windows licence" etc. Most people really DON'T care. They have an abundance of licences and machines lying around. What is discouraging though is the "Well its about £1000 for a CF licence".
I know, I know it will save you in maintenance, building time down the road. But its always seen as an extra cost, like it or lump it.
Anyway, back to the original point. My answer (to the question could a CF enviorment could be set up cheaply) was yes. There's Bluedragon. I've never used it, but always hear good things. So as you could imagine I was shocked to learn that as of ver 6.2 of BD, there is now a licence for commerical(non-SSL) use of this.
Personally I see this as a sad move by New Atlanta. Im not saying they shouldn't of done this, they deserve to make money and get rewards for their hard work. I just wonder if they should of/could of tried a MySQL type licence first, and seen how the response was? I think if CF is ever going to move into the market share of the free languages then we need a free contender. There is a free cf engine out there called Ignite Fusion, though i haven't had a chance to use this it looks like some of the basic syntax is different e.g. <cfloop> become <cffor>. There is definately a gap here that needs filling.
The good news is that you can still use 6.1 ver of BD for free, though it is no longer available for download.
Comments
One of the guys there simply loves this free tool.
And.. It's always possible to make some changes in the app to try to "bypass" this kind problems they have with some tags.
As far as I know, they've got just one file which is responsible for running the instance, and you could easily create some replaces in your application.cfm
I mean, you're creating "Ignite Fusion AJ", but never ever try to sell it! :-)
I think you know what I mean.
Cheers mate!
Check out http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/prod...
It clearly states that this free version is for "non-commercial" development (found on the Download page). Andy was looking for a viable commercial option. I agree with him that this sucks.
Yeah. Especially since they used the "free" bluedragon to attack CFMX so much....
paul
There is a detail license agreement here, but I can't get much clarification out of it:
http://www.newatlanta.com/shared/bluedragon_sla.ht...
You could use it for non-profit sites, but for commercial ones you had to buy the license.
I think all that's changed is that they've clarified the wording.
I don't have a copy of the old license handy, so I can't double-check.
The license has been like this for quite a while, so it's not something new. I think it was set up this way with the initial '6.1' release (They went from version 3 to 6.1 if memory serves me)
A few other alternatives that I have bookmarked that you might want to check out a few other alternatives:
Coral:
http://www.pcaonline.com/prod/index.cfm?loc=coral
Ralio:
http://www.railo.ch/en/index.cfm
I think one is designed for desktop apps, not web apps though. Once you get away from BD the compatibiltiy and support seems to subside.
"If, instead, you are acting as part of commercial organization where CFML server technology like BlueDragon would normally be part of the overall economic food chain for that organization, then we'd like to partake in that greater corporate revenue stream via a license fee."
I will say that Charlie did mentioned; "Always feel free to contact us[New Atlanta] with your particulars. Most people agree we are "nice" and "fair"."
Cheers
