A Response from Laszlo Systems

Dietrich Kappe, Wednesday, October 18, 2006 @ 8:00 am

Jim Grandy, the director of OpenLaszlo from Laszlo Systems, took the time to respond to my post from yesterday on the criticisms of OpenLaszlo from Flash/Flex developers. He also took me to task for publishing claims about failed OpenLaszlo projects:

I think you did yourself a disservice by picking an inflammatory and attention-seeking title and then posting anonymous allegations. Frankly, I could come up with any number of "failed project" anecdotes about every significant technology I have ever worked with, so it's not that impressive or useful to make a claim like this. How many times did folks fail to deploy Flex-based apps? How many Flex2-based apps have been abandoned? Why would you call in a Flash developer to rescue an OL project? Were those rescue missions successful?

I will take his criticisms to heart. No matter whether I trust my contacts, a claim that cannot be verified and critiqued by either myself or the reader is not worth publishing. Here then are Jim's comments.

Hey Dietrich,

If you'd like to talk to some *OpenLaszlo* developers, drop me a line and I'd be glad to get you in touch. Flash development is really a very different beast than OpenLaszlo development, and in my experience not too many people are fully informed with both, so you might want to collect some OpenLaszlo data points so your comments are more interpolation than extrapolation.

One factual correction:

+ OpenLaszlo's scripting language is ECMAScript Edition 3, aka JavaScript 1.5, aka JScript 5.6. It's correct that there are (minor) differences between ActionScript and OpenLaszlo's scripting language, but in my opinion ActionScript is the outlier -- you can port DHTML/Ajax code libraries to OpenLaszlo much more easily than to Flash.

And some responses:

It's arguably a good thing that OL is a version behind Flash. First of all, high market penetration of new Flash players is not immediate, and we try to have OL releases available before penetration tops 80%, which is where most Internet (not intranet/kiosk) project cycles are initiated.

And second, OpenLaszlo is compatible with Flash 6, 7, 8, and (in emulation) 9. Flex 2 is only compatible with Flash 9 native. If you want to develop in Flex against the 95% penetration player, Flash8, you have to use Flex 1; Flex 2 only works in Flash 9 native. So developers with previous investment in Flex 1 apps need costly retooling to run in Flash 9 native, whereas OpenLaszlo's cross-runtime architecture means you will be able to run the same app across multiple current *and future* runtimes as they are supported. As a datapoint, we brought our Calendar demo, a 3700 line app, into DHTML by changing fewer than 1% of the code.

In fact, the "Flash is proprietary" argument is one of the big reasons OpenLaszlo is expanding to include DHTML and JME runtimes. Would you want to deploy a multi-million dollar app against Flex 2 when Adobe's strategic interests for the Flash platform may not be in alignment with your own over the long term? With OpenLaszlo, not only are we not aligned with Adobe, we're not captive to Adobe either -- and since the project is open source, you don't have to be in alignment with us either.

Furthermore, if you've seen our Calendar demo running in DHTML in FireFox 1.5, you'll know that there's no Flash monopoly on clean, animation-rich user interfaces -- DHTML is as capable a Flash in that regard. So the "Flash advantage" may not be so much after all. (I should say we are enthusiastic about being hosted on Flash 9 native -- it appears to be significantly faster then Flash 8 or 9 in emulation mode.)

And finally, with regard to your unsubstantiated claims of "failed projects", all I'll say is that there's a word for this rhetorical technique in usenet: it's called being a "troll". I almost didn't reply to this posting because I didn't want to give you more traffic, but we're a small company and don't have the PR reach of Adobe so we have to be clear about our advantages whenever we can.

Technorati : ajax, flash, openlaszlo

agile ajax

Comments: 3 so far

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1. 

   I’ve been reading this agile ajax blog for a bit, it does have interesting stuff in it. But the ‘bad news’ writeup on openlaszlo felt completely uninformed, and dense. The response by Jim exposes it as such, thank goodness. It doesn’t matter if you have nice things to say about openlaszlo later, Dietrich, being an apparent FUD slinger, or not taking your writing seriously, whichever, is very lame.

   I’m someone who has checked out both flex and openlaszlo. I have not extensively used either, and would be very interested in an intelligent comparison, which it seems will not be coming from this blog. Trying to peg openlaszlo to flash, when the dhtml aspect is so well known? Perspective lite, anyone?

   Comment by mx, Friday, October 20, 2006 @ 1:03 pm

2. 

   mx,

   the dhtml has yet to be released and in PR4 still has some gaps. Once it is released, it sure changes the equation for those considering Flash/Flex/Ajax/OpenLaszlo.

   For what it’s worth, I accept some of your criticisms. As for the name calling, I’ve discovered that when you hold out your thoughts and writings in public, you sometimes make mistakes. If you do that, you admit the mistakes, make ammends and move on. If someone calls you a FUD slinger or dense, you have to develop a thick skin.

   Comment by Dietrich Kappe, Friday, October 20, 2006 @ 9:52 pm

3. 

   It was the combination of the rather scathing title, and the not so great information that followed it, that struck me as a bit of a disservice. Anyways, it was mature of you to post the OpenLaszlo response in full. I was a bit rude, and I apologize for that.

   Comment by mx, Saturday, October 21, 2006 @ 7:31 pm

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