Re: [AOLSERVER] the something that is not right with the AOLserver project ... was Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver facelift.
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 01:39:28 -0500, Andrew Piskorski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please, *OF COURSE* the 3 guys who want to add multi-protocol support to the AOLserver core are a minority of AOLserver users! *YOU* are a minority of AOLserver users too, Dossy. Right. There's a huge difference between majority rules and stewardship. Today's installed base may not care one whit about multiprotocol support, OCaml integration or better documentation in Japanese. Today's users aren't the target audience, so trying to identify demographics in the current userbase is a strawman. Placating the majority here is a path towards stagnation and death, not innovation and growth. For the sake of argument, ~95% of AOLServers users don't and won't modify the codebase (including docs). And those same users don't use more than ~50% of the features in AOLServer. The issue isn't whether or not to enlarge the scope of the project to include a feature, like multiprotocol support. The issue *should* be whether to include that feature based on its merits. If ~95% of users next year do not use multiprotocol support, who cares? If we were talking about, say, turning AOLServer into an X-Window manager, mail reader and web browser, then the proposed changes would be questionable, because they are not in scope with the mission/goals of the project. -- Adam -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] the something that is not right with the AOLserver project ... was Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver facelift.
BNA uses AOLserver to produce publishing artifacts on web pages. We publish subscription content on the web. We use the server to produce HTML over the HTTP protocol. Our subscribers log into the web site and read / print what they need to get their own jobs done. End of story. The 5 line code change supports a dirt simple means of doing what looks like virtual hosting to the subscriber so that the product name appears as the hostname in the HTTP header. In the content on the web publishing business BNA is a late adopter and not exceptional at all. All BNA needs is a fast, stable, easy to use web server. AOLserver is all of those things and more. We just don't need to use the more part of it. I perceive the conversation to be about project support for the none HTTP business, the more part, that AOLserver also supports. Dossy Shiobara [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2005.02.07, Greg Wolff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We LOVE AOLserver from at least one point of view: we don't need to do anything to it to make it work. It just works. In all our years of using AOLserver we have made exactly ONE source change to the core C code. [...] So, this raises the following questions: Is BNA an exceptional case? Or, do most users of AOLserver share a similar experience? Are the folks who are asking for changes in the core in the majority or minority? I think the answers to these questions are important. -- Dossy Dossy Shiobara [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: AOLserver Discussion AOLSERVER@LISTSERV.AOL.COM 02/07/2005 04:37 PM Please respond to AOLserver Discussion To: AOLSERVER@LISTSERV.AOL.COM cc: (bcc: Greg Wolff/BNA Inc) Subject:Re: [AOLSERVER] the something that is not right with the AOLserver project ... was Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver facelift. -- Dossy Shiobara mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/ He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on. (p. 70) -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] the something that is not right with the AOLserver project ... was Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver facelift.
Adam Turoff wrote: On 2005.02.07, Greg Wolff wrote: We LOVE AOLserver from at least one point of view: we don't need to do anything to it to make it work. It just works. In all our years of using AOLserver we have made exactly ONE source change to the core C code. [...] (Disclaimer: I work with Greg on the project described above.) In my experience, this behavior is the norm for corporate use of open source, regardless of the particular open source project under discussion. I would guess that less than 25% of teams using open source tools make any modification to any of the tools they use to get their jobs done. (My gut feeling is that the number is less than 5%, but that's just a SWAG.) While I would agree with these numbers, I just thought I'd make the point that almost nothing that ActiveState (and the Sophos parts that were ActiveState) touches as far as open source *doesn't* get modified. IOW, we modify (enhance, fix, etc) the majority of OSS code that we make use of for our own purposes. I think once you reach the barrier of comfort with dealing with open source software, you can swing hard to the other extreme. -- Jeff Hobbs, The Tcl Guy http://www.ActiveState.com/, a division of Sophos -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] the something that is not right with the AOLserver project ... was Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver facelift.
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 04:37:54PM -0500, Dossy Shiobara wrote: Is BNA an exceptional case? Or, do most users of AOLserver share a similar experience? Are the folks who are asking for changes in the core in the majority or minority? I think the answers to these questions are important. BNA doesn't hack on C code and doesn't plan to either. So what? No, the answers are NOT important, and in fact are probably totally irrelevent. Please, *OF COURSE* the 3 guys who want to add multi-protocol support to the AOLserver core are a minority of AOLserver users! *YOU* are a minority of AOLserver users too, Dossy. Their proposed changes are obviously of SOME general utility - if they weren't, 3 developers at 3 different companies working on 3 entirely different applications would not have all indepently come up with problems and solutions. The only question is what are the costs and risks of incorporating those patches into the core, and how best to do so? In this context, any discussion of minorities and majorities of AOLserver users is just silly, and irrelevent. -- Andrew Piskorski [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.piskorski.com/ -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] the something that is not right with the AOLserver project ... was Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver facelift.
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 05:20:31PM -0500, Dossy Shiobara wrote: That's been my experience as well. I'm trying to understand and rationalize the existance of a small but vocal minority that keeps asking for features that appear, at the surface, to have very limited utility to those outside of the small group that keeps asking for it. asking for features is wildly innaccurate, what you have here are developers who are OFFERING features for inclusion in the official sources - this is a very different thing. In a sense, you seem to have an embarassment of riches problem here, Dossy. -- Andrew Piskorski [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.piskorski.com/ -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
