Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver's documentation woes and its future

[Rick Gutleber]

If AOL wants to sever its ties with AOLServer (and it looks like it does) then a name change is probably in order.  It's a shame because there are good reasons for each to be associated with the other by name.  From my limited experience, I think the tool has benefitted from tremendous talent and skill involved in creating and supporting it, but has also suffered from a black sheep status and no longer being whole-heartedly supported in its own right by the company as an open-source project, but rather as "Here's something spiffy we use, if you can do something with it, knock yourself out, but take it as is." and that's about it.  Releasing it to the OSS community was an incredibly good thing, and I think sets a great example for the kinds of things AOL wants to do and needs to do now.  But it seems to me that it is only somewhat supported, and mostly because it's still being used in-house. I know there was confusion around here when 4.5 was released as to its disposition here at the company; there probably still is.  I think AOL could benefit greatly from embracing and actively supporting the tool _even_ if they themselves phase out their use of it.  In order to remake itself as a Web 2.0 entity, the company is going to need to invest more in technology in and of itself, as a means to germinate and nurture the kinds of products and services that will set it apart from (and ahead of) the competition. If they don't want to, then the Open Source community should try to shop it around to see if another corporate user could sponsor a core development and documentation team.  The problem, in my mind, is that the arguments against using it are not based on technology.  AOL might have legitimate reasons to move away from it... I'm not in a position to know or understand those reasons... but no one seems to be saying it shouldn't be used because it doesn't, at the end of the day, work. Just some ideas.  As an AOL employee, I'd love to see what's best for both the company and the tool.  I think at this point, they probably should admit their parting of ways and start to move on. Support for more popular languages (come on, let's say it together, I know it's hard, but "Tcl is not popular") is probably the most useful long-term technical change that can be made.  This isn't an indictment on Tcl or a no-confidence vote, but just an attempt to be more open and accommodating to users and (more importantly) potential users.  And as for the topic of the language you use, I would suggest reading this:  http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html.  Viva alternate programming languages, or as Mr. Spock would say:  Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Rick Dossy Shiobara wrote: On 2006.09.05, Bas Scheffers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: What about the website? I *really* think we should move this to AOLserver; we have to practice what we preach! Maybe just go with OpenACS? Any experts on that who would want to be technical lead on that? If hosting is a problem (I hope not at AOL!) I am perfectly willing to host it. I share an underutilzed fast box on an even faster internet connection in Telehouse in London and we'd have no problems with select members of this community having logins to it. Lets do it. Lets get it all set up and ready to go, then we can request the DNS admins at AOL to point aolserver.{com,net,org} there. -- Dossy -- 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.