Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported?
Microsoft will always own the NT server market and there will be a miniscule following for AS on NT. A survey would likely show that the number of active AS users (users, not IP addresses) is already tiny compared to Apache and IIS. As a product with a smallish audience, it makes a lot of sense to focus on doing the best thing for 99% of the userbase rather than investing in things that will benefit 1% of the userbase and at the same time potentially harm the 99% because of added complexity, less time to test on the Unix platforms because of testing on Win platforms, more tech support required for Win platforms because of less use/less testing/fewer users beating on it, etc. Not trying to start a flame war here - I know everyone has their likes and dislikes when it comes to computing platforms. I'd really like to see a survey done of how many active AOLServer users there are, what platforms they're using, and so on. Maybe I'll get around to doing it one of these days. I think the results would make decisions like these crystal clear. Maybe I'll have time to do it one of these daze... Jim Cygwin is a great toolkit, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who is used to working on Unix. But I would like to see AOLserver 4 continue to run natively under Win32. In addition to Cygwin taking up disk space and adding another layer of debugging / installation / configuration complexity, there is a performance penalty - not something I'm excited about introducing into my web server. I don't want to seem ungrateful - I am indebted to Jim, Kris, and the rest of the AOLserver community for their fantastic work. I just hate seeing good features go away. Anyway, I will try to build AOLserver 4b2 on top of Cygwin sometime soon. In the meantime, please email me if you are interested in experimenting with this. Thanks, Jamie At 02:06 PM 11/8/2001 -0600, Rob Mayoff wrote: This was discussed in the last weekly chat. Yes, the plan is to stop supporting Win32 in AOLserver. Reasons given, as I recall, were that it took a lot of Jim's time to implement/maintain and added significant complexity to some parts of the code, such as the threads package (especially since he's now considering supporting only pthreads, not other random proprietary threads APIs). A suggestion was floated that AOLserver could perhaps run on top of the cygwin package, which implements many Unix APIs and commands under Windows. If someone wishes to port AOLserver to run on cygwin, and it doesn't require many changes, then I suspect that Jim would accept the patches for that.
Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported?
The decision to drop Win32 has been kicking around for some time now. My interpretation of the chat two weeks ago was that dropping Win32 support should make it easier to make AOLserver more robust and maybe faster in the UNIX environments. It will definitely make it an easier application to support. For the *nix users, that's a great win, and the large reason I support dropping Win32 support. That said, I'd love to see a cygwin port, and perhaps that's something that our win32 community can strive to provide. Jerry Jerry Asher [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1678 Shattuck Avenue Suite 161 Tel: (510) 549-2980 Berkeley, CA 94709 Fax: (877) 311-8688
Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported?
As a user of a mixed NT/Linux environment, the decision to drop Win32 is a bit of a bummer for me and my employers. We're now left with IIS and maybe Apache. But the group's logic makes sense, especially the part about having a miniscule user base in the Win32 world, and that situation continuing into the future. As I said we are also getting into Linux, so we'll be looking for you all there... -- Mark Hubbard: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft Certified Professional Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. (quote shamelessly lifted from Mr. Virden) -Original Message- From: Jerry Asher [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, November 09, 2001 11:17 AM Subject: Re: AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported? The decision to drop Win32 has been kicking around for some time now. My interpretation of the chat two weeks ago was that dropping Win32 support should make it easier to make AOLserver more robust and maybe faster in the UNIX environments. It will definitely make it an easier application to support. For the *nix users, that's a great win, and the large reason I support dropping Win32 support. That said, I'd love to see a cygwin port, and perhaps that's something that our win32 community can strive to provide. Jerry Jerry Asher [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1678 Shattuck Avenue Suite 161 Tel: (510) 549-2980 Berkeley, CA 94709 Fax: (877) 311-8688
Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported?
Jerry Asher wrote: The decision to drop Win32 has been kicking around for some time now. My interpretation of the chat two weeks ago was that dropping Win32 support should make it easier to make AOLserver more robust and maybe faster in the UNIX environments. It will definitely make it an easier application to support. the biggest down side is that it's harder to sell aolserver if you can't say oh yeah, it runs on windows if you need to deploy it there too.. it makes AOLserver seem that much more irrelevant to the unwashed masses.. i think the real competitor to aolserver is apache and if apache runs on windows but aolserver does'nt.. it becomes a harder sell.. -mike
Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported?
- Original Message - From: Mike Hoegeman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 11:21 AM Subject: Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported? Jerry Asher wrote: The decision to drop Win32 has been kicking around for some time now. My interpretation of the chat two weeks ago was that dropping Win32 support should make it easier to make AOLserver more robust and maybe faster in the UNIX environments. It will definitely make it an easier application to support. the biggest down side is that it's harder to sell aolserver if you can't say oh yeah, it runs on windows if you need to deploy it there too.. it makes AOLserver seem that much more irrelevant to the unwashed masses.. i think the real competitor to aolserver is apache and if apache runs on windows but aolserver does'nt.. it becomes a harder sell.. But the real point is that AS isn't a product.. its a piece of software that we are reaping the benifits of using.. and as a result they have to do the stuff that makes the best sense for them... we are the ones that have to figure out how to best leverage what they do.. -- Patrick Spence, MIS Mayor Pharmaceutical Labs/Regency Medical Research, Ltd. 2401 South 24th Street, Phoenix, AZ 85034 [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.vitamist.com
Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported?
Patrick Spence wrote: masses.. i think the real competitor to aolserver is apache and if apache runs on windows but aolserver does'nt.. it becomes a harder sell.. But the real point is that AS isn't a product.. its a piece of software that we are reaping the benifits of using.. and as a result they have to do the stuff that makes the best sense for them... we are the ones that have to figure out how to best leverage what they do.. hey, i'm not expecting that AOL in any way accomodate me, just putting in my two cents worth to allow them get a feel for what people think of recent developments. otherwise, we might as well call this list AOLserver_announcements instead of AOLserver_Discussion... -- Patrick Spence, MIS Mayor Pharmaceutical Labs/Regency Medical Research, Ltd. 2401 South 24th Street, Phoenix, AZ 85034 [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.vitamist.com -- Mike Hoegeman Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 805-279-7306
Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported?
+-- On Nov 8, Jamie Rasmussen said: Is AOLserver 4 going to be unsupported on Win32? That would make me quite sad, as I just spent some time cleaning up the Visual Studio project files and was almost ready to submit them as patches. Can anyone tell me why this is happening, or if I am mistaken? This was discussed in the last weekly chat. Yes, the plan is to stop supporting Win32 in AOLserver. Reasons given, as I recall, were that it took a lot of Jim's time to implement/maintain and added significant complexity to some parts of the code, such as the threads package (especially since he's now considering supporting only pthreads, not other random proprietary threads APIs). A suggestion was floated that AOLserver could perhaps run on top of the cygwin package, which implements many Unix APIs and commands under Windows. If someone wishes to port AOLserver to run on cygwin, and it doesn't require many changes, then I suspect that Jim would accept the patches for that.
Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver 4 - Win32 not supported?
Actually I was hoping that AOLserver would eventually run on cygwin instead of Visual Studio. From what I tested cygwin is much easier for a person with UNIX experience. -- WK
