What with the recent changes in the RIA market, including the emergence of Microsoft's Silverlight (going into beta on Monday at the MIX conference), Adobe's decision to open source its Flex platform by the end of 2007, I asked David Temkin, the Co-founder and CTO of Laszlo Systems (the original open source RIA company), to comment. He writes:Having started in 2000, Laszlo is the industry's first rich Internet a What with the recent changes in the RIA market, including the emergence of Microsoft’s Silverlight (going into beta on Monday at the MIX conference), Adobe’s decision to open source its Flex platform by the end of 2007, I asked David Temkin, the Co-founder and CTO of Laszlo Systems (the original open source RIA company), to comment. He writes:Having started in 2000, Laszlo is the industry’s first rich Internet application (RIA) provider. The company took its proprietary software development platform open source in October 2004 and renamed it OpenLaszlo. With a long list of blue-chip companies and institutions, including Walmart, IBM, H&R Block, Monster, Sears, AllState, and others using OpenLaszlo, Laszlo is leading the competition in commercial RIA adoption today. Adobe’s Flex announcement is following in Laszlo’s footsteps 2.5 years later, which is a long time in such a dynamic industry. We have been anticipating this news as it is a logical and inevitable step after Adobe made the Flex SDK free last year. One of the most important things that we’ve learned about being open source is that developers want and expect an open approach throughout their development experience. That’s why the latest edition of our platform, OpenLaszlo 4.0, allows RIAs to run not only on Flash, but also on the open source Ajax runtime. We are uniquely positioned to offer cross-runtime deployment, and it’s proven to be a major advantage in spurring adoption and product sales. The beta launch of Microsoft’s Silverlight on Monday will also drive additional interest in the RIA space and will hopefully escalate overall adoption. We view Microsoft’s entry into RIAs as a good thing for us and for the market as a whole. Laszlo will continue to monitor Silverlight’s growth, and depending on its adoption curve, it could very well become another runtime for OpenLaszlo applications in the future. All of which makes this RIA market all the more interesting. You have movements like these (above), as well as Bungee Labs setting up a web development platform for creating RIAs (the system birthing other systems – a bit postmodern…), and undoubtedly a range of things happening of which I haven’t the slightest inkling. It’s nice to see open source building the applications that will run on the open source LAMP infrastructure that makes it affordable and scalable to do so. And, frankly, it’s great to see Laszlo Systems in the middle of it all. All this attention on the RIA space will put competitive pressure on the company, of course, but also attention that will surely help it, too. Open Source