Thanks for sharing your opinion and it has brought up some of my own
that I had held in reserve for sometime now.
I would 100% agree with a claim that a name is effecting usage if we
were selling a food product or something else to the general public, but
even then far more products have failed because they weren't properly
explained to the public. mod_perl is a beast of tool/product. It
harnesses the full power of Apache web server and Perl to allow you do
dam near anything with the data you need to handle. Apache because of
its large platform support and well designed architecture has proven
that it is enterprise ready. That brings me to the rub of this
discussion however, Perl. I love Perl, I use Perl for almost every
programming task that I need in my work and personal computing use.
That isn't enough though. Perl has a rep, MySQL has a rep too. These
*once* true statements such as "Its just a scripting language for Unix"
or "It doesn't support transactions" etc. are becoming more and more the
cripples of the acceptance not the name. These great and power products
don't have someone dispelling the myths on national television while
none computer managers are watching TV, they only remember what the last
consultant said. I am not knocking managers I am just showing human
nature, that is we don't change our opinions unless someone we trust
(the TV? ) more then the last person explains clearly why we should.
We have had several discussions over the last three years on this list
about advocating mod_perl. I think what it really boils down to is a
polished web presence and a strong statement of the power and efficiency
of the product at hand and in this case a <place your favorite open
source application here> page to refute known myths.
Aaron Johnson
Chris Thompson wrote:
>
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Jonathan M. Hollin wrote:
> > Ideas for logos, banners, "powered by"-type buttons are all welcome.
>
> Well, I'd like to just throw one idea into the mix. It's something that's
> bugged me for a long time, no better time than the present.
>
> "mod_perl" is a lousy name.
>
> There, I've said it.
>
> For any number of reasons, perl does now and will always face an uphill
> struggle in any "Enterprise" application.
>
> For example, at my place of employment, we just went through a rather
> arduous task that I fought against and lost.
>
> We had a production site that handled a decent amount of traffic. Apache,
> mod_perl, Linux and MySQL. It ran and ran with almost no intervention.
>
> The management team of the company that bought us a year ago had been trying
> to force a change in the product by throwing up various arguments, which
> were always false. ("MySQL doesnt support Transaction", "Yes it does". "But
> they arent atomic.", "Yes they are". "Well, you can't roll them back.", "Yes
> you can.")
>
> In the end, I lost. From October to mid January they set about taking our
> fully functional product and "replatforming" it to Win2k/IIS/ASP+VB/MSSQL.
> The final reason? "Responsible enterprises do not use perl."
>
> mod_perl needs a name. Something marketable, something catchy. The java
> folks learned that a long time ago. Their systems are called
> "Tomcat/Jakarta" and "Cocoon" and "Resin".
>
> THAT, in my opinion, is what should happen for mod_perl 2.0. It should be
> "Adirondack" or "Orwell" or any other generic, innocuous name. Even
> "MonkeyButter v1.0" is probably a better deal than mod_perl.
>
> As for logos, Avoiding Camels or Eagles is a requirement. I don't blame ORA
> for requiring the trademark notices, the twisted concepts of US trademark
> law REQUIRE them to do that. The first time they didnt, they could lose
> their trademark. But we should have a "mascot" that makes sense and is OURS.
> Linux has the penguin, OpenBSD has the blowfish, the other BSD's have the
> devil. Those images are clearly associated with those products, and can be
> used WITHOUT corporate approval.
>
> --
> _______________
> Chris Thompson
