Habari - There is always room for Jell-O!

A couple of days ago, Chris J. Davis spilled the beans about a new, and currently under heavy development, blogging package called Habari. I immediately gave it a test run, and so far it does look like it might be going somewhere, and that fast. Interestingly enough, I read a posting on neosmart.net, called "How WordPress Spoils Developers". Interesting read, but clearly filed in the fanboy category and it's not exactly unbiased post, but it does bring up one question that I think needs an answer.
In a nutshell, the blogging market is c.l.o.s.e.d. – as in no more room, and most importantly, no more competition; because let’s face it, whatever you’ve got, it’s just never going to be good enough.
Now, is this true? Should we all just abandon everything because someone else already has figured out the best way to do something, and there is no way to top that? If that was the case, we would see no progress at all in any area. This doesn't just apply to computers and software, but just about everything. It's all been done to perfection, move on, there is nothing to see here. Do we believe so? Ok, I'm probably going a bit over the top here, but still. If we applied this kind of thinking to Web Browsers, we would never have seen Firefox and probably never seen Internet Explorer 7 either. When I think about it, we wouldn't have seen Wordpress either. After all, when Matt forked b2/cafeklog and started on Wordpress, Moveable Type was the blogging platform everyone used and was widely regarded as a good product. The Wordpress about page explains why Wordpress has been developed, and if we applied the same kind of logic to its history it would never have seen the light of day. Sorry, I just don't buy it. Wordpress isn't perfection, the only code I've seen the really looks like poetry is the Gallery 2 source code. Thats probably because I was never really good at analyzing poems in school, but thats an entirely different matter. As far as my experience with the Wordpress developers/community goes, the biggest advantage it has are the non-official developers that are devoting lots of time on plugins and support. In fact, the best selling point for Wordpress is the community it offers, not the main development. Of course the main development give the opportunities that the plugin developers take advantage of, I'll give them that. Now, back to the real reason why I'm posting this. Habari. So far Chris J. Davis and Khaled Abou Alfa is out of the closet, but given that I know who the rest of the crew is my firm belief is that Wordpress will be given a run for it's money. I'll even promise to do whatever I can to help it's development and rise to stardom.

Posted by Christian Mohn aka h0bbel

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Published January 7, 2007 01:01
10 comments

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10 Responses to Habari - There is always room for Jell-O!:

  • Owen
    January 7, 2007 1:47am

    WordPress has done very well for me. I’ve been very supportive of WordPress, writing core code, plugins, and documentation for a (relatively) long time. I recognize it’s benefits, but it is by no means the unassailable monolith that Computer Guru asserts.

    I don’t get the feeling that Habari is aiming to “overtake” WordPress as the dominant blog platform. It’s goals seem aimed at creating a solid blogging platform, based on modern programming techniques and tools, with a welcoming user and development community.

    I’m sure that an objective comparison between other blogging tools/communities and WordPress’ will reveal things that people prefer in the alternate packages. Habari certainly seems attractive in many of those respects.

  • h0bbel
    January 7, 2007 2:20am

    My post was very influenced by the post I commented on when I published this, so I might have been a bit harsh. But my point still remains the same, there is always room for more products, the product just needs to be good enough. I think Habari will be.

  • Chris J. Davis
    January 7, 2007 5:05am

    Very nice post. I was blown away by the linked article as well. Having been a nominal but commited core contributor and an outspoken advocate of WP, I have a special place in my heart for the software and the community.

    The bottom line is that I felt that I wanted to operate in a more inviting environment for developers, and that place is Habari. It also helps that the things we have planned are just sick. Seriously… just sick.

  • Matt
    January 8, 2007 12:09am

    There is always always room for someone new in even crowded markets, otherwise WordPress itself wouldn’t exist. In fact the more crowded the market, usually the bigger opportunity.

  • h0bbel
    January 8, 2007 1:24am

    Thanks Matt, I didn’t really think that posting was representative for the Wordpress developers. I just had to make my point especially regarding the “no more room” statement.

  • » What’s Up?
    January 9, 2007 11:29am

    […] to these sites, who talked about Habari early on: h0bbel Blogging Pro Yellow Swordfish Photomatt wank Solo […]

  • moeffju.net » Habari
    January 10, 2007 5:41am

    […] Habari is a new blogging platform being developed by a number of well known people, some of which are fed up with open source, others just looking for new challenges. […]

  • schultmc
    January 11, 2007 5:47pm

    I used the original b2 for years, then switched to b2evolution while WordPress matured. I finally switched over to WordPress last year when b2evolution failed to help keep my spam comments/trackbacks manageable. I have to say, WordPress is a lot better now than when I first evaluated it. BTW, WordPress forked b2/cafelog, not cafeklog :)

  • Neues Blogsystem: Habari at ogeeBloggin’
    January 31, 2007 8:44pm

    […] Habari Witnessing the birth of an open source project: Habari Heard of Habari yet? Time to Habari Habari - There is always room for Jell-O! PhotoMatt - […]

  • How WordPress Spoils Developers at The NeoSmart Files
    May 7, 2007 6:50pm

    […] Habari - There is always room for Jell-O! - h0bbel Pingback on Jan 7th, 2007 at 12:02 […]

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