Tcl Devs Wave Goodbye to Scriptics and Hello to Ajuba
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Programmers howl
Ousterhout summarized the transition: "For the Tcl community there isn't really any news in the name change. It's simply the culmination of our transition from a pure technology provider to a solutions provider. We will continue to work closely with the Tcl community to create great Tcl technology, while building high-value B2B integration solutions on top of that." If it's that simple, why did so many programmers respond in the tone of someone whose pet dog had been shot?
Part of the reaction probably stemmed from the fact that Ajuba initially failed to even mention Tcl in their press release or on their web site. Those omissions were misinterpreted by some programmers and fueled inaccurate gripes about licenses and restrictions that simply weren't true. Some members of the Tcl community began to worry that development might stop and that the future of the language might be neglected.
Other fears, better-grounded in reality, also came out. Tcl's fans universally praise its productivity; programmers like wrapping up work quickly. Almost equally universal among Tcl users is the experience of "wasting time" explaining the language. Managers and clients demand to know why Tcl isn't like Visual Basic, or Perl, or C++, in some particular.
Scriptics' role in these often-frustrating conversations was to give comfort as "The Tcl Company." Though Ousterhout judges "there really isn't any news in the name change," Tcl practitioners in the field agree that the absence of a stable Tcl lightning rod makes their persuasive jobs harder. Steve Blinkhorn of Psychometric Research and Development Ltd., for example, tells how difficult it is to communicate the reliability of the Tcl language, when its parent company appears so fickle.
More ambiguous are Tcl's technical prospects. Ajuba depends on Tcl's health, that is, on its correct operation, on a self-sustaining mass of external recruitable users, on its continuing openness to industry trends, and so on. Ajuba appears to have as much incentive as Scriptics ever did to invest in Tcl's maintenance and growth, and at least as much financial ability. How will the community of users react, though? Will they continue to contribute new code and other key deliverables, or will Ajuba's reorganization so damage their motivation as to strip Tcl of its technical edge?
Ajuba employs long-time Tcl developer Jeffrey Hobbs as "Tcl Ambassador." Here's his intent:
For the greater good, it is no longer our (Ajuba's) goal to try and make a buck selling extensions to Tcl. Instead we will be interested in seeing more extensions created and thriving, with the hope that we'll be able to make use of them here. To this end, we will be putting more organizational effort into the Tcl Developer Xchange to spur community support and interest in the language.
The open source dance is a delicate one, with the same players alternating between voluntary action and occasional substantial material gains. Can the pattern stay healthy past an initial burst of enthusiasm?
Zope is a telling example of an apparent open-source success. Digital Creations, Inc., received venture capital backing at roughly the same time as Scriptics was founded. Digital Creations is a consultancy that gives away Zope, a Web application server and object publisher that is its principal intellectual property. Business is good enough, though, that despite receiving no income for the product, Digital Creations is solidly profitable and growing rapidly.
Digital Creations is quite clever about how it presents itself in public. Superficially, it differs from Ajuba in being a service rather than product company, and its language base is Python, generally regarded as a rival to Tcl. In operation, though, it seems to live several of the principles Ajuba aims to exploit. In a recent conversation with Paul Everitt, CEO of Digital Creations, he emphasized:
- Time to market, with the ability to improve the base technology overnight.
- "By creating a platform with lots of buzz and lots of players, we get the valuation multiple of a product company, even though we give our intellectual property away. Note that this also justifies ongoing R&D."
- "The community has become as important as the software or the company. It sets the tone for how we are received -- they act as viral marketing, create a wide choice of solution providers and hires, and tremendously increase the 'gravity' or perceived size of Zope, well beyond our 30 people. Perhaps most importantly, they are the passion that gives Zope a heartbeat."
- "I've learned how to sell Open Source."
Zope has its own PR challenges within the Open Source community, of course. On Monday, May 29, Digital Creations issued a press release with ActiveState Corporation announcing its intention to bind Zope to the Perl programming language, as well as Python. This set off a predictable storm among Python advocates who see "language wars" as a zero-sum game they don't want to lose to Perl. In general, though, Zope's users appear to have a reservoir of goodwill for Digital Creations. They largely trust its ability to balance business and engineering needs.
Tcl has lost out on that sort of confidence and "buzz" recently. Python, for example, has grown more rapidly than Tcl over the past couple of years, as measured by conference attendance, download growth, book sales, and so on. Much of the outcry about Ajuba's name change really is concern that Ajuba will acquiesce to Tcl's perceived stagnation. A variant of this sees Ajuba corrupting Tcl by taking the language in a direction that serves only Ajuba. Larry Virden, who maintains the authoritative FAQ collection for the language, speaks for long-time Tcl contributors:
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As Ajuba moves away from being identified as being driven by technology, other companies who have strong foundational ties to Tcl are concerned that in some way the free nature of Tcl will become less free; that their investment of time and energy will be lost somehow. I get the impression that many will be never be satisfied as long as Tcl is 'held' in the hands of people involved in commercial interests."
Hobbs knows this, and already has plans for new releases of Tcl and TclPro. Ajuba recognizes it needs the external Tcl development community. Will Ajuba achieve the financial success it's after? Will it use that success to reinvest in the programmers who help build its technology? The year 2000 looks to be a true turning point for Tcl.
Cameron Laird is the vice president of Phaseit, Inc. and frequently writes for the O'Reilly Network and other publications.
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