I know that the sad state of the documentation has been a big problem
for a long time. I'd really like to hear suggestions from everyone as
to how we might go about solving it.
I want to chime in with a different viewpoint:
1) the documentation is actually excellent, it's just scattered
between old and new, it's just recent features are poorly
documented. A few common tasks need how-tos. Most open source
projects have little or no docs, only the the massive Apache-sized
stuff is a lot better than what aolserver has.
2) there is lots of good competition - everything from Ruby, Python
and Zope to LightHttpd is in the same kind of mind space --
alternatives to Apache that have cool ideas in them.
3) the name is a small problem -- I have to explain it to people, but
then they get excited by the realization "wow, if aol uses it, it
must be pretty good", so while aol is not known for open source
projects, it does serve as one hell of a reference customer
4) tcl is more of a problem, people just don't want to learn a language.
5) if there's one thing I think aolserver could do to get more people
to use it, it would be to put php in as a standard language, not as
cgi, but mod_php style, AND take all the groovy aolserver apis and
make them available to php commands. I know I can run php from cgi,
but it's in no way better than apache at that task. But... I'll bet
that aolserver running php as a primary language would be faster than
apache.
6) pick on apache's weak spots, most specifically, languages that are
cool but run very slowly in apache. Ruby is what comes to mind --
I'm seeing reports of massive scalability problems with Ruby under
apache due to the cgi architecture, and since languages are so easy
to glue into aolserver, that seems like a no-brainer.
7) in general, if aolserver was a great place to run the common web
languages in a fast, multithreaded way, and did well on the
benchmarks vs apache, I think the language zealots would begin
pushing aolserver as the best platform
8) BTW, I convinced my ex-company Lyris to give aolserver a try,
moving from tclhttpd, and Rusty (who's on this list) is doing a test-
port to aolserver right now. So, there definitely are companies
willing to experiment with aolserver.
-john
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