Hi all -- This list does not hear from me much, but I agree with Tom's assessment of the state of AOLserver. Our bugs compared to other "more staffed" open source projects are far less and far fewer. In addition, I have been working with Open Source for many years and I used extensively, Apache, Apache2, Netscape, Cold Fusion, IIS (a paid for enterprise environment), and other more esoteric servers... but the net of my time and experience is that the AOLserver is the most robust, stable, and very very secure (if you take the time to set it up correctly) server that I have ever worked with.
As to your user base (I am one of your users), if our community truly desires more users, it is simple -- marketing marketing and marketing -- how? -- Clear concise documentation for the masses (as Sep Ng talks of documentation) and many many books (that people pay for to use the open source) -- so all AOLserver coders out there of this GREAT "product", write a book or two and get them published by O'Reilly Media, Addison-Wesley, Safari, Kluwer, Artech House, and the like -- there are many technical publishers out there looking for good books to print and sell... And if you are a good negotiator, you will reap the rewards of your internal knowledge of the open source code. Then, as Tom states, if someone needs "their bug" fixed, they can hire one of the many talented AOLserver coders to fix the problem and have the fix merged back into the code base. I myself simply read the code to understand what is going on... but it is a complex product that does amazing things compared to Apache and the like... So this has been an interesting conversation to watch and read, but the net of this is that AOLserver rocks! I too want to thank all of the core AOLserver coders for creating such a fantastic product over the years!! Bravo to you all. Regards, Robert Garron On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 22:06 -0700, Tom Jackson wrote: > Maybe I'm being too ambiguous. Do we have any critical bugs? I don't > think so. Yes, the ticket tracker might have unresolved "tickets". But > just because we have stuff in our ticket tracker doesn't mean that any > particular item actually needs or demands resolution. > > As I have stated before, most bugs are found by users who have demanding > needs, not casual users. If these bug finders don't have resources to > fix the bugs that they find, who cares? > > Personally I have no economic sympathy for a user who has millions of > hits per week or month and just spent time "upgrading" from a forked > version of AOLserver to the current version only to discover "bugs". > > Why not pay someone to fix your problems? Instead, with the AOLserver > community, you get a few hints of what to try for free! But if someone > needs documentation, this is really not a community problem. Most > community members know what they need to know and know how to ask about > the things they don't know. > > By my estimate we get a handful of bugs per year. Almost everyone could > continue to use AOLserver without any fixes to these bugs. How much > organization do we need to deal with such an ideal situation? My guess > is about as much as we have right now. > > One thing which make no sense to me is delegating documentation to those > who didn't write and can't maintain the code they are trying to > document. It isn't a matter of training, it is a matter of > responsibility. If you want to maintain some code, you should also > maintain the documentation. But, you know, sometimes documentation is > satisfied by responding to user questions when they use your code. This > is the highest form of documentation: maintain ownership and > responsibility for the code you write, and respond to user queries. > > Personally I have no clue how we could recruit new community members who > could contribute at an acceptable level compared to long term members > who know all the ins and outs of the code. Just review how much effort > is involved getting agreement among current members. Why would less > experienced community members aid in code modification? > > Anyway, the basic problem is that there isn't much real work that needs > to be done. Why is this so bad? > > tom jackson > > On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 19:20 -0400, Dossy Shiobara wrote: > > To quickly summarize: > > > > 1) Dave Bauer identifies the "lack of anyone doing anything about [open] > > bugs" and the lack of "process or resources to deal with the bugs" as a > > problem. > > > > 2) Tom Jackson identifies that there's little in-community support for > > would-be contributors to get their changes merged into the codebase. > > > > 3) Tom Jackson identifies that there is "a lack of documentation of all > > kinds". > > > > Lets do a little wishful dreaming for a moment and brainstorm actionable > > ways to try and address these deficiencies. Let me try to seed this > > with a few questions: > > > > How can we find resources to deal with bugs, support contributors and > > write documentation? What would it take to get existing contributors to > > contribute more? How can we recruit new contributors? > > > > Would adequate funding aid in adressing these issues? In best-effort > > accuracy round number estimates, what kind of funding levels would we > > need to reach to achieve what kind of results? > > > > If training were provided, could we transform more passive community > > members into more active contributors and supporters? What kind of > > training would be necessary? What subjects would need to be covered in > > order to enable what kind of contributions? > > > > ... > > > > Feel free to add more questions as appropriate, but especially answers > > that have clear actions associated with them. I'll try to do my best to > > collate the various actions and present them in a concise list. Then, > > maybe we can try to find ways to make those things happen. > > > > > -- > AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ > > To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to > <lists...@listserv.aol.com> with the > body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: > field of your email blank. > -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <lists...@listserv.aol.com> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
