Musings from Mars Banner Image
For Software Addicts: Yes!MaybeNah!
Mars Report:

Beware Lock-Ins in Open-Source and Ajax Clothing!

Published March 24th, 2006
Tersus Open Source Visual Programming Platform, "Visual Ajax!" Tersus LogoThis is an interesting strategy... suck 'em in with an open source development platform and then make money on an enhanced commercial version. Not a bad thing, except in this case it's just another attempt to create a "visual" web application platform... you know, "Build your application with no coding at all!" We've all heard this before and know how lame these tools always turn out to be.

If Tersus is that magic pill, well great. But I suspect it's just another attempt to lock developers in to one particular toolset. And the "Ajax" flag they're waving looks bogus to me... In all the pages of documentation I read on their site, I saw nothing that qualifies as Ajax. Certainly nothing that qualifies as DHTML in 2006, either. The main demo app they display doesn't work in Safari or Opera. I didn't bother to try it in Firefox, though it's supposed to work. All of the screenshots are of Windows XP windows, of course... A real open-source platform, that!

I'll be curious to see if my first reaction is right on this one. There appear to be some things to like--for example, the Visual Studio thingy works as an Eclipse plugin on both Windows and Linux. But I'm suspicious because of the generic nature of the web application components, the lack of Ajax components despite the prominent "Visual Ajax!" flag they wave, and the commercial website that lies lurking behind all of this.

    
  • del.icio.us
  • Google
  • Slashdot
  • Technorati
  • blogmarks
  • Tumblr
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Mixx

Show Comments
Just Say No To Flash