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The time has come for Flex 1.0

Roman Pichlík ·

The ambitious Flex technology from
 Macromedia has just been officially released. Flex
 is supposed to make it possible to build rich internet applications that solve
 many of the problems of today’s web applications.

There’s plenty of commentary around the release, of course. For me, the biggest
 unknown was how the technology would be licensed and what it would cost to deploy for real. I’ve 
 raved about Flex many times, but now I have to admit through gritted teeth
 that my picture was a little too rosy.

Now that the final release is out, it’s clear that Flex is aimed primarily
 at the enterprise market, and the price reflects that. A two-CPU license costs $12,000. In other words, running Flex 
 on a J2EE server with two processors, or with one, will set you back $12,000.

Unfortunately, that feels like a stab in the back for developers who aren’t working on enterprise systems, where
 one might overlook the cost and accept it. Until recently, Flex had been presented as
 a technology without any single target segment. People expected it to see broad use
 across the spectrum.

A discussion of Flex licensing, costs, and more broke out under the article 
 Macromedia Flex 1.0 Released on
 TheServerSide. For an interesting perspective on Flex and what it offers
 at that price, see Christophe Coenraets’s Thoughts on Flex Positioning.

What can I add in closing? Flex will undoubtedly find its place. Unfortunately,
 it’s hard to expect widespread use without a change to the licensing. There are certainly alternatives, such as XUL in
 the Mozilla project or XAML, which Microsoft is preparing.

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