"It's especially pointless to argue about a glass being half empty, or half full, if the man behind the bar is still pouring. That's my message to those who wrote to ask about the jarring juxtaposition of last week's letter, which praised the breadth of development tools available for open-source platforms, against an eWEEK news story about Linux distributors working to deal with a 'dearth' of visual tools and integrated environments.
"Some readers castigated the latter story as overlooking obvious examples, such as Borland's Kylix and JBuilder; Oracle's JDeveloper; and Metrowerks' CodeWarrior IDEs. That misses the point that the would-be Linux developers quoted in that story were looking for the same cordial coupling between their Linux distribution and its tools that they've grown accustomed to seeing between Microsoft's operating system and Visual Studio tool set.
"Linux long ago won the interest of developers who actually seek out the challenge of crafting their own solutions, and is rapidly gaining ground with those who are willing to do that work in return for corresponding freedom to choose best-of-breed combinations; the question now is whether open source can take the next step to become an alternate destination on the path of least resistance..."
