Re: Success Stories
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 16:05 -0500, Marc Slagle wrote: > Including the information that $X million is run through the system in > a day/month/year would be more for the benefit of those who are not > going to be doing the programming. Sometimes it would help for a > developer to go to their boss and show them the "numbers." eToys is a good tech story, but business-wise, it went bankrupt. I think Ticketmaster is the poster child you're looking for. If the numbers in that article I posted weren't enough for you, you can probably get more by contacting people there. The amount of money Ticketmaster Online makes is a matter of public record. - Perrin - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success Stories
Perrin Harkins wrote: On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 11:35 -0500, Marc Slagle wrote: If there is a way to go back and get the numbers on the total dollar value of the orders run through the EToys system, it would probably be a good bit of information to include. Why would this be relevant? To show that people trusted real money to a mod_perl system? I think a lot of people don't really trust perl for handling anything critical. For some people I'm sure its the misconception that mod_perl is just "cgi scripting". And I think the success stories show that mod_perl is in a class of its own. Including the information that $X million is run through the system in a day/month/year would be more for the benefit of those who are not going to be doing the programming. Sometimes it would help for a developer to go to their boss and show them the "numbers." A lot of places where I've worked the management wasn't interested in much else. If I had pointed them to the success stories on the site, the response would have been "It doesn't look like anybody is making money doing this." We obviously can't point managers to a huge Microsoft or Sun site that holds tons of articles and other materials that "prove" their solutions are the best. I think we should maximize the impact the success stories have on non-programmer types. I wasn't trying to pick out eToys for doing something wrong, it was just an example. Marc
Re: Success Stories
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 14:45:51 -0500 Perrin Harkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think what you're looking for is what Craig McLane (of > Ticketmaster.com) does in his talks at conferences, where he discusses > how much they save by using open source. Check this one out: > http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7242 I wonder if Mr. McLane would be willing to write up a full article for publication in a magazine and the website. I think this would help lend some credibility to us. Maybe put it up on itmj.com as well? - Frank Wiles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.wiles.org - - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success Stories
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 11:53 -0800, Randal L. Schwartz wrote: > Oh, then this was slightly before you? There was a study comparing > mod_perl to three other technologies for the "rewrite" of the site, > and was the reason mod_perl was chosen as the "new technology", not > just because you had legacy CGI-Perl-to-Registry usage. Oh, now I remember what you're talking about. That was later, when we were preparing to rewrite for the next Christmas. We all wanted to use mod_perl, but needed to make sure we weren't making a mistake, so we did some basic benchmarks against Java servlets using Resin. The result was that mod_perl came out slightly faster. I forget what else we tested; there may have been a couple of other things. - Perrin - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success Stories
> "Perrin" == Perrin Harkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Perrin> In the case of eToys, they used Perl because the two Cal Tech Perrin> students they hired to build the site liked it. Later, they Perrin> ported some of it to Apache::Registry in order to keep up with Perrin> the load. When I joined, they were trying to figure out how Perrin> to gear up for the next Christmas season. I took the job Perrin> largely because they were already using mod_perl and planned Perrin> to do more of it. Oh, then this was slightly before you? There was a study comparing mod_perl to three other technologies for the "rewrite" of the site, and was the reason mod_perl was chosen as the "new technology", not just because you had legacy CGI-Perl-to-Registry usage. I can't talk more about it, because I'm bound by NDA. :) -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training! - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success Stories
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 11:35 -0500, Marc Slagle wrote: > If there is a way to go back and get the numbers on the > total dollar value of the orders run through the EToys system, it would > probably be a good bit of information to include. Why would this be relevant? To show that people trusted real money to a mod_perl system? > Perhaps a blurb reminding the author to > include as much information on the money made/saved by their > organization could be added to the bottom of the success story page > where the instructions for posting are. The thing is, eToys didn't "switch" from anything, so how could you reasonably say how much money was saved? Companies like IBM will be glad to take as much money as you will give them, so you could say we saved 300 million dollars, but it wouldn't mean much. I think what you're looking for is what Craig McLane (of Ticketmaster.com) does in his talks at conferences, where he discusses how much they save by using open source. Check this one out: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7242 - Perrin - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success Stories
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 08:55 -0800, Randal L. Schwartz wrote: > Perrin, you know the one I mean, the study of *why* you chose mod_perl > there. With real hard objective numbers about performance and defect > rates and time-to-deploy. But... it wasn't like that. I doubt it ever really is. Technical decisions at companies are either political or almost pure chance. They are only rational on an individual basis. Open source adoption is often driven by developers from within who demonstrate its effectiveness on small projects until management can't say no anymore. In the case of eToys, they used Perl because the two Cal Tech students they hired to build the site liked it. Later, they ported some of it to Apache::Registry in order to keep up with the load. When I joined, they were trying to figure out how to gear up for the next Christmas season. I took the job largely because they were already using mod_perl and planned to do more of it. - Perrin - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success Stories
> "Marc" == Marc Slagle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Marc> If there is a way to go back and get the numbers on the total Marc> dollar value of the orders run through the EToys system, it Marc> would probably be a good bit of information to include. I only Marc> mention the EToys article because I think most people would Marc> point to it as "the" example that they would want to use in a Marc> conversation with management on why mod_perl should be used. I also wish that some former Etoy-er (nudging Perrin) would *finish* and *publish* the article that should have come out of EToys about "why mod_perl". Perrin, you know the one I mean, the study of *why* you chose mod_perl there. With real hard objective numbers about performance and defect rates and time-to-deploy. -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training! - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success Stories
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 11:35:25 -0500 Marc Slagle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > While the stories on the site are great, almost none of them make any > mention of the financial success of the project. They are very useful > > in showing other developers what mod_perl has to offer, but are > difficult to use in convincing someone who only cares about "revenue > generation." If there is a way to go back and get the numbers on the > total dollar value of the orders run through the EToys system, it > would probably be a good bit of information to include. I only > mention the EToys article because I think most people would point to > it as "the" example that they would want to use in a conversation with > management on why mod_perl should be used. > > I think that a lot of the time these stories are written by the > programmers, who are much more interested in proving that the > programming environment is superior (it is) than showing the financial > > gains made by switching over. Perhaps a blurb reminding the author to > > include as much information on the money made/saved by their > organization could be added to the bottom of the success story page > where the instructions for posting are. I've been thinking about writing a success story related to my day job. Years ago we wrote a mod_perl application that handles all our our cable modem provisioning (we're a cable ISP). Our system handles all of the current and future versions of the DOCSIS standard, runs on mod_perl/Apache/Postgresql, and has more features than the commercial offerings. Most of the commercial offerings that come close are in the $100k price range, ours cost $6k in in-house development labor. Granted I've got a kick butt mod_perl coder working for me, but it's still a nice success story with some numbers. I could also talk about all of the other projects we've done in ISP automation, news paper publishing, cable, telephone, and online publishing areas. Anyone think this is a bad idea? If not I'll get something worked up for the site in the next couple of weeks. - Frank Wiles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.wiles.org - - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Success Stories
While the stories on the site are great, almost none of them make any mention of the financial success of the project. They are very useful in showing other developers what mod_perl has to offer, but are difficult to use in convincing someone who only cares about "revenue generation." If there is a way to go back and get the numbers on the total dollar value of the orders run through the EToys system, it would probably be a good bit of information to include. I only mention the EToys article because I think most people would point to it as "the" example that they would want to use in a conversation with management on why mod_perl should be used. I think that a lot of the time these stories are written by the programmers, who are much more interested in proving that the programming environment is superior (it is) than showing the financial gains made by switching over. Perhaps a blurb reminding the author to include as much information on the money made/saved by their organization could be added to the bottom of the success story page where the instructions for posting are. Marc Slagle Online-Rewards 2900 Jefferson Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45219 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success stories patch
Frank Wiles wrote: On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:02:32 -0700 Stas Bekman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: No, no need for URL: prefix. All urls m#(http|ftp|etc)://# are automatically converted into links. But it's good to have the main URL in the headers as your patch did. Then why don't the perl.apache.org and Calmaeth links have HREFs on these two pages? http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/allakhazam.com.html http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/calmaeth.maths.uwa.edu.au.html These two pages are what led me to believe only the links listed in the URL: header were linked. are sorry, text is not parsed. if you look at the autogenerated pod, those stories are converted into /^ $line/ format, so they are unparsed. The idea was to preserve email formatting and not needing to worry about pod-unsafe characters (<, >, &, etc.) Alternatively we could replace that with plain text but first having pod unescaped. This should be just a local fix in ./make.pl. Once this is done then urls will be linked and text re-wrapped... As we seemed to agree at the advocacy list, we shouldn't not delete sites that are no longer there. Just indicate that the site used to be "openscape.org" but is no longer with us. remove the http:// part, justing leaving the domain name, so it won't get linked. I thought we could outsmart the death, by doing: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://openscape.org/ but alas the domain squatter set the robots rule, so we can't even know whether there were some pages stored in the internet archives. But we should definitely use http://archive.org/ in the future for those sites that have ceased to exist, instead of removing the link. That works for me. Yeah we definitely agree that we don't want to remove stories for sites that no longer exist, but I wasn't sure what we should do about sites that have changed ownership and are obviously not the same site. I thought it might be confusing to the reader. Good idea about using archive.org, I always forget that site exists. if the ownership changes, and we can give a direct link to the last snapshot at archive.org, then it's cool. in either case we should explain that the online version is either not there anymore or that the link that used to point there doesn't point to the same thing anymore. As usually old links tend to start pointing to porn sites, which try to cash on the existing users of those previously non-porn sites. -- __ Stas BekmanJAm_pH --> Just Another mod_perl Hacker http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success stories patch
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:02:32 -0700 Stas Bekman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > No, no need for URL: prefix. All urls m#(http|ftp|etc)://# are > automatically converted into links. But it's good to have the main URL > in the headers as your patch did. Then why don't the perl.apache.org and Calmaeth links have HREFs on these two pages? http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/allakhazam.com.html http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/calmaeth.maths.uwa.edu.au.html These two pages are what led me to believe only the links listed in the URL: header were linked. > As we seemed to agree at the advocacy list, we shouldn't not delete > sites that are no longer there. Just indicate that the site used to be > "openscape.org" but is no longer with us. remove the http:// part, > justing leaving the domain name, so it won't get linked. > > I thought we could outsmart the death, by doing: > http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://openscape.org/ > but alas the domain squatter set the robots rule, so we can't even > know whether there were some pages stored in the internet archives. > > But we should definitely use http://archive.org/ in the future for > those sites that have ceased to exist, instead of removing the link. That works for me. Yeah we definitely agree that we don't want to remove stories for sites that no longer exist, but I wasn't sure what we should do about sites that have changed ownership and are obviously not the same site. I thought it might be confusing to the reader. Good idea about using archive.org, I always forget that site exists. - Frank Wiles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.wiles.org - - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Success stories patch
[pinging back the advocacy list] Frank Wiles wrote: Here is a patch for the Success Stories. Just cleaned up some mispellings, obvious mistypings, and some minor grammar corrections. Thanks Frank, committed. I also make sure to add URL: headings for stories that contained URLs in the body, but didn't list them at the top. I'm assuming that only the URLs after a URL: tag get HREFs, if that isn't the case let me know what the regex looks for and I'll clean up the URLs in the bodies. No, no need for URL: prefix. All urls m#(http|ftp|etc)://# are automatically converted into links. But it's good to have the main URL in the headers as your patch did. I'm not sure about this story: http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/openscape.org.html The site isn't up anymore (domain squatter has it) and it references the site to the point the story almost doesn't make sense. I'm leaning toward removing it, but I wanted to see what everyone else thought. I'll go through the sites page over the weekend. As we seemed to agree at the advocacy list, we shouldn't not delete sites that are no longer there. Just indicate that the site used to be "openscape.org" but is no longer with us. remove the http:// part, justing leaving the domain name, so it won't get linked. I thought we could outsmart the death, by doing: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://openscape.org/ but alas the domain squatter set the robots rule, so we can't even know whether there were some pages stored in the internet archives. But we should definitely use http://archive.org/ in the future for those sites that have ceased to exist, instead of removing the link. -- __ Stas BekmanJAm_pH --> Just Another mod_perl Hacker http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Suggested call for Success stories!
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:21:19 -0700 Stas Bekman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I agree with Frank. > > +1 to keep all the stories intact, just to remove the URLs if they are > > dead and can't be adjusted. > > > If everyone agrees with me on this I'd be more than willing to > > double check all of the links and correct some of the English > > errors I spotted. Is this section of the website in CVS that I > > can patch against? > > Yup, there are .txt files in > modperl-docs/src/outstanding/success_stories/ > (they get translated to pod by running ./make.pl in that directory) > and there is a related > modperl-docs/src/outstanding/sites.html > in case you want to review it as well. Sounds good I'll review both of them over the weekend. - Frank Wiles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.wiles.org - - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Suggested call for Success stories!
Frank Wiles wrote: On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:50:58 -0700 "Philippe M. Chiasson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Another thing that could help would be to go thru the existing success stories and make sure all those sites are still in business. Volounteers? Do we really need to do that? While the business might not have been a success their previous use of mod_perl was still a success right? We should make sure all of the links to websites are still valid, but other than that I don't see anything wrong with leaving the story up. The stories without URLs, for the most part, won't be researched by anyone to see if they are still in business anyway . Also some of the stories only list "my former employer", "one of my consulting contracts", etc. I agree with Frank. +1 to keep all the stories intact, just to remove the URLs if they are dead and can't be adjusted. If everyone agrees with me on this I'd be more than willing to double check all of the links and correct some of the English errors I spotted. Is this section of the website in CVS that I can patch against? Yup, there are .txt files in modperl-docs/src/outstanding/success_stories/ (they get translated to pod by running ./make.pl in that directory) and there is a related modperl-docs/src/outstanding/sites.html in case you want to review it as well. -- __ Stas BekmanJAm_pH --> Just Another mod_perl Hacker http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Suggested call for Success stories!
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:50:58 -0700 "Philippe M. Chiasson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Another thing that could help would be to go thru the existing success > stories and make sure all those sites are still in business. > Volounteers? Do we really need to do that? While the business might not have been a success their previous use of mod_perl was still a success right? We should make sure all of the links to websites are still valid, but other than that I don't see anything wrong with leaving the story up. The stories without URLs, for the most part, won't be researched by anyone to see if they are still in business anyway . Also some of the stories only list "my former employer", "one of my consulting contracts", etc. If everyone agrees with me on this I'd be more than willing to double check all of the links and correct some of the English errors I spotted. Is this section of the website in CVS that I can patch against? - Frank Wiles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.wiles.org - - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Suggested call for Success stories!
Stas Bekman wrote: Philippe M. Chiasson wrote: Hey, I'd like to gather thoughts around wording an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] urging people to submit success stories. So, how about something along these lines: Is the company you are working for using mod_perl ? Is your no company listed here http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/index.html ? Well, if you answered Yes to both questions, submitting a success story is simple and easy. Just download the success story template from http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/template.pod (not there yet), fill it in and submit it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's that simple! The mod_perl Advocacy team +1 Great, then I guess we need to get a nice and simple template written and posted on perl.apache.org? Another thing that could help would be to go thru the existing success stories and make sure all those sites are still in business. Volounteers? In fact this should be sent to the modperl list every 2-3 months, since people need to be reminded of that... Good idea! Also I had an additional input when I was posting this request at use.perl.org. Many people for whom mod_perl 'just works' aren't on the mailing list, so they will never see it. So use.perl.org usually is a good place to cross-post this request (but probably at a lesser repetition, so the post gets approved :) -- Philippe M. Chiasson m/gozer\@(apache|cpan|ectoplasm)\.org/ GPG KeyID : 88C3A5A5 http://gozer.ectoplasm.org/ F9BF E0C2 480E 7680 1AE5 3631 CB32 A107 88C3A5A5 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Suggested call for Success stories!
Philippe M. Chiasson wrote: Hey, I'd like to gather thoughts around wording an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] urging people to submit success stories. So, how about something along these lines: Is the company you are working for using mod_perl ? Is your no company listed here http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/index.html ? Well, if you answered Yes to both questions, submitting a success story is simple and easy. Just download the success story template from http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/template.pod (not there yet), fill it in and submit it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's that simple! The mod_perl Advocacy team +1 In fact this should be sent to the modperl list every 2-3 months, since people need to be reminded of that... Also I had an additional input when I was posting this request at use.perl.org. Many people for whom mod_perl 'just works' aren't on the mailing list, so they will never see it. So use.perl.org usually is a good place to cross-post this request (but probably at a lesser repetition, so the post gets approved :) -- __ Stas BekmanJAm_pH --> Just Another mod_perl Hacker http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Suggested call for Success stories!
Hey, I'd like to gather thoughts around wording an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] urging people to submit success stories. So, how about something along these lines: Is the company you are working for using mod_perl ? Is your no company listed here http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/index.html ? Well, if you answered Yes to both questions, submitting a success story is simple and easy. Just download the success story template from http://perl.apache.org/outstanding/success_stories/template.pod (not there yet), fill it in and submit it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's that simple! The mod_perl Advocacy team -- Philippe M. Chiasson m/gozer\@(apache|cpan|ectoplasm)\.org/ GPG KeyID : 88C3A5A5 http://gozer.ectoplasm.org/ F9BF E0C2 480E 7680 1AE5 3631 CB32 A107 88C3A5A5 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
