As stated above by Rob Gonda and anonymous, what you’re describing does not sound like something “new”. It may be “better” than what is out there, but that remains to be seen. At this stage, it is very unlikely that you’ll see any interest just talking about it. At minimum, people have to try/see that it has something more than what is out there already.

In addition, I have to say that it is not likely for you to get any traction this late in the game even if you do release the code. There are many freely available toolkits out there. You may not think they are like your product, but they aim to solve the same problem. Take a look at the list at the:
http://edevil.wordpress.com/2005/11/14/javascript-libraries-roundup/

If you still think your tool is unique, then you still have to consider that this is the field you’ll have to compete with.

There is consolidation/standardization going on, http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/atf/
which means the outcome of this project will likely have the most users, regardless of whether it is the “best”.

In short, it is unlikely for you to have a business model based on a toolkit. You may be better off to focus on the product you’re building, rather than the toolkit. After all, if people need the product, they won’t necessarily care which toolkit it’s based on (as long as it’s not causing them problems)

Good luck!

The fact that they’re charging for it means I’m not totally crazy that there’s something of value here.

It would be significant work to twist my framework to work with Dojo, since Dojo works in a very different way.

I’m not talking about exhorbitant charges, more like a small monthly subscription (or even advertising) to get docs/apis/web ide access. The reason for it is not that I want to get rich of of it, but I’d like some kind of revenue so I can survive and keep hacking.

You are so far behind the curve here, it’s just silly. Your paranoia is simply ludicrous.

That said, if you wanted to contribute some of this to the Dojo framework, we could all use it instead of having to pay huge fees to companies like Isomorphic to use excellent Ajax frameworks.

I’m not actually worried about the code being stolen once I set up my developer tool:

The resultant code would then be free to be used / hacked on your websites / web applications (no draconian licensing agreements, although plugs for the library/IDE would be appreciated).

I’m worried that if I have a quick demo up now, it will be reverse engineered before I can make my developer tool available. I’m looking for feedback of interest for the framework and what people would be interested in from an IDE standpoint.

I’m starting to gather that people aren’t interested (by the lack of comments) unless they can play with it.

There are ways to secure your JavaScript by loading it dynamically in the client’s RAM instead of including it in the browser. While this can be sniffed too by http packet analyzers, it sure makes it more difficult.

If after all that you’re still afraid, for real, start developing in Flex maybe.

eg. Many would wonder why they need to develope a ajax powered web application (with your gui tools) in the first place. As ajax still very deemed as a web programming, not application. Paradigm shift is required

a good example, where people will realise how useful is ajax would be – google office (though at this moment, it’s still a myth).

keep up your good work.

The loader takes care of all dependencies, and only fetches the js code that’s needed. The other cool thing is if multiple pages use the same code (obvisouly in the same domain), it’s usually automatically fetched from the browser cache, further accelerating the dl.

The other thing I wasn’t keen on was the emphasis on DHTML eye-candy above the fundamentals for web application development. When looking for example web applications with Rico, Dojo, and prototype the examples listed were almost always “swooshing” or “fading” panels. That’s neat and all but I don’t think it should be the focus.