There are many ways to handle support issues, and I can give some ideas. An interesting model is to see what commercial products like Resin (www.caucho.com) are doing. They offer several levels of support, based on different prices, and they have the source code available to customers. Currently they sell a great JSP engine, with plans to add EJB support in the future. So what can Orion learn from them? 1. They can make the source code available. 2. They could hire more Java programmers. I am sure they are in Sweden, since the Orion team lives there, in addition to Rickard O., a cofounder and developer of Jboss. 3. If the source code were available, more people from this list could become familar with it, and hire themselves out as support consultants. 4. Make partnerships with other companies to offer support, which would still mean having the source code available to the companies. 5. Hire a technical writer to create a manual, equavalent to the jboss manual. The sale of one server for $1500 would more then pay for this effort. 6. Get purchased by a deep pockets company, that has no EJB or JSP products, and become part of their staff. I could go on, but ideas are easy to come up with, and are not difficult to implement. Now on to other servers and open source. Orion is unique, since it can offer a great commercial server for $1500, and offer features compatible with BEA. But while the open source efforts, such as Jboss, Enhydra, Jonas, and openejb, are still in their infancy, and you may not want to use them for production now, I personally root for them, encourage them, and in time, I believe they will offer production quality products that compete with the big names. And if Orion keeps on plugging away, they too will be immensely successful. May the force be with them all. -----Original Message----- From: Stan Ng To: Orion-Interest Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 4/13/01 10:09 PM Subject: Future directions for orion support A most interesting twist... Hmm... I dunno, this is most unexpected. It's probably best to wait a couple days so that Joseph/Magnus can address this issue. Given that Orionsupport went dark today, it seems control of orionsupport has passed on to the orionserver/Ironflare folks. That may indicate a dedicated support site in the near future or it may mean that community support will now slow to a crawl... The Orion developers have been mighty quiet. I really like Orion as a product and would prefer to see it become immensely successful. Nevertheless the lack of feedback from Ironflare is disconcerting... Personally, I'm hedging my bets with jboss.... Returning to the core question -- I wholeheartedly agree that better support is vital, be it official or community-based. If no groundbreaking news comes from Ironflare or orionsupport, I'm all for orionsig. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael J. Cannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Orion-Interest" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 6:07 PM Subject: RE: productive comment. > Another bit of info: > > From NSI WHOIS: > > http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=orionsupport. com& > STRING=Search > > Magnus owns it now. > > NOW WHAT? > > Michael J. Cannon > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng > > Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM > > To: Orion-Interest > > Subject: Re: productive comment. > > > > > > I'm all for this idea. Orionsupport is a community support > > effort run on a > > volunteer basis and I believe that it is hosted on Joseph's development > > machine using Orion. :) : ) :) I'd be willing to help shoulder > > some of the > > costs in moving everything over to an ISP host. > > > > There's no need for a new domain, imho... orionsupport has been very open > > and supportive (no pun intended). I say that we just give those > > good folks > > a nice place to put everything without tying up their resources. > > > > Community support for Orion has been excellent. The thing I'm > > worried about > > is how the Orion developers are doing... is there anything we can > > do to help > > out the guys at orionserver/ironflare? > > > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Michael J. Cannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: "Orion-Interest" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:47 PM > > Subject: RE: productive comment. > > > > > > > RE: How do we take the next step? > > > > > > A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer > > > culture. > > > > > > orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. > > Don't > > > need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest > > group,' > > > as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make > > > unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. > > > > > > I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted > > connection. I know > > > an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run > > services > > > for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a > > > multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a > > small CLEC). > > > They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's > > (turn-around > > > is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the > > internic). > > > I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, > > > after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on > > > Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. > > > > > > Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? > > > > > > Michael Cannon > > > mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > >
