Nov 22 2005

jComponents: Goodbye.

Posted by Joe Rinehart at 7:24 AM
8 comments - Categories: jComponents

I've been catching some grief, both publicly and over personal e-mail, for my 404ing of the jComponents custom tags. While I do apologize for the way I've just let those e-mails sit in a bucket for a while, I don't really appreciate some of their contents.

Use of the component set was free, was a support nightmare (I get 10+ e-mails a week, most of which are from people who FTP encoded CF files in ASCII mode), nobody was buying it (the source wasn't free, remember?), and it wasn't all that good in the first place.

If you're looking for what they provided (tabs, trees, etc.), I'd strongly suggest you check into CFMX7 or Flex 2. They provide much cleaner, extensible, standardized implementations.

I'm sorry if this comes of as crass, but seriously - it doesn't help those of us who do contribute to the community when we wake up to anonymously sent complaints about our contribution.

Comments

Paul Carney

Paul Carney wrote on 11/22/05 10:17 AM

Hey Joe,

Don't let the turkeys get you down! Mean people suck and unfortunately, they are the ones you will hear from the most!

I still use jComponents in one application and will continue to do so until I start using some AJAX components next year.

Keep up the great work. There are many of us that support you out here.

Paul
SOSensible

SOSensible wrote on 11/22/05 10:49 AM

What was the purchase price... could I pay you for an open source version. (Or would you even consider selling rights to it.)

I for one did not know that you had a paid for version. The 404 page doesn't tell me that. Perhaps there are others who are not intuitive enough to guess that on their own either. Perhaps it would help if you considered what you would do if Adobe dropped ColdFusion from the product line and just 404'd support and all that also. We are normal consumers, and my guess is the response is a bit predictable.

With that said, now knowing no one was giving you any gratis for your work I can say that is a shame. Again... would you sell me the rights to use and/or distribute solutions built with jComponents. (I never used it because it wasn't open source and missed the open source notice on your original site. It would not be suprising if others missed it also.)

John
SOSensible

SOSensible wrote on 11/22/05 10:55 AM

P.S.
You should add a "Donations" link to ARF. I don't want to see that go by the wayside and would be glad to send you some support. Ray Camden has a wish list on Amazon for his rewards. You should look at a way to encourage support... your work is not trash... and you know that already or you wouldn't have released it in the first place. It's good work and you should continue. Perhaps you should create a project thermometer based on how willing you are to continue to develope a project... heh! Then count donations algorithmically as warming the temp! (If you didn't write something people liked it wouldn't be an issue. Must not be trash after all... revive it or just put the section back as "unsupported" for the free version and paid support only for the paid version. You could even do what some others have and create a forum on groups.yahoo.com or google groups and let the users support each other.)
Tinbusiness

Tinbusiness wrote on 11/23/05 3:34 AM

"If you're looking for what they provided (tabs, trees, etc.), I'd strongly suggest you check into CFMX7 or Flex 2. They provide much cleaner, extensible, standardized implementations."

Is there a standard, built-in way to do tabs in CFMX7. Could not find a <cftab> or similar.. Please indicate what you meant by this..
David

David wrote on 11/23/05 2:38 PM

John,
"Perhaps it would help if you considered what you would do if Adobe dropped ColdFusion from the product line and just 404'd support and all that also."

Crucial difference: We pay (a lot) for a perpetual license to use a ColdFusion server. For that money, we can reasonably expect full and clear documentation, and support for a reasonable number of years. If a tool is provided free, however, all you can really expect to get is whatever the developer happens to have time and inclination to give.
SOSensible

SOSensible wrote on 11/27/05 10:10 AM

Read your ColdFusion Lisc. and you will find there is no requirement for Adobe to support or continue to develope CF. That is why this merger sparked much fear in the community. (Those of us who saw Allaire bought by MM are not as jumpy... but you will find that I brought that same point to Joe in another post.) Our lisc. of CF is for the existing code base, not perpetual in the sense of upgrades. We get the documentation they provide and if we want support we have to pay for it.

My suggestion in the other post is to either release the product to the market since it was a no money maker and offer no support. (I believe the laborer is worthy of his hire... don't expect anyone to offer free support, though some choose to and that is great also.) OR... charge for support, put a forum up and let the users support each other like is done with CFAjax or QForms.

Joe offering something to the community and then pulling it away from then is only naturally going to get a negitive response. My suggestions are seeking to see the product return to the market. I even would be glad to pay him for an open source version... guessing the price isn't to high... heh. (I spoke with another Macromedia User Group Manager and he was also unaware that there was a pay'd version... condsidering he did a meeting that highlighted jComponents as a cool tool that says very few people even knew there was a paid version.)
dick

dick wrote on 12/21/05 2:17 AM

I relise that Joe as taken this off the market, and I don't want to start more moans, but has anyone got a copy of the final public zip, or the source code, that was available (dickbob + gmail.com)?

TIA

dick
Rick

Rick wrote on 03/15/06 12:17 PM

Joe, would you consider donating jComponents to the open source community and letting other developers take it over? Take yourself out of the support loop entirely?

You said that nobody was buying it.. is anyone buying it now? Massimo just released his own free tab component but I think jComponents were pretty nice too.

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