Re: OrionSupport - if you care about the 'Orion community', read it! WAS RE: productive comment.
Bill, send it to me ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), Joe Walnes ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), or Mike, and we'll see about integrating it. One of the things that got lost when we translated orionsupport to its current look and feel was the "how to submit your own stuff" article, which is something I'd not realised. On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 11:35:11PM -0600, Bill Winspur wrote: Mike, went to the egroup on yahoo, signed up, but could not see any buttons/links to check/post messages. I have a 'howto setup a custom welcome-app' doc to submit for what its worth. Bill - Original Message - From: "Mike Cannon-Brookes" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 7:52 PM Subject: OrionSupport - if you care about the 'Orion community', read it! WAS RE: productive comment. Ok, I feel it's time for me to step in here as one of the 'Joe Co.' people. Firstly, everyone calm down. As Hani said yesterday, every few weeks this whole "Orion support sucks, my boss won't buy Orion without support, I'm having a whinge" thread starts up again. Calm down and read the archives people ;) THE SITUATION: With regard to the future of OrionSupport, here are the things I _know_ are currently happening: - As far as I know it, Joe is on holidays which is probably why he's not answering his email - he hasn't been on IRC for about a week. Everyone just calm down ;) - The domain IS owned by IronFlare / Orion. As far as I know this was done by the previous owners so that it would always be an Orion support site. I have no problems with this at all, the guys have given us free reign over the content / production of the site. - The site IS down now, I'm not sure why. It seems to me Joe's machine has fallen over but we'll know when we get back. Meanwhile there is an archive of all content up to March 18th kindly hosted at www.theculprit.com - There ARE moves in progress to upgrade the site. As Hani said in a previous email it currently runs on lots of OpenSymphony technologies ( http://www.opensymphony.com - see gratuitous-OpenSymphony-plug at the end of this email) like SiteMesh, OSCache and Clickstream. I'm in the process of upgrading it to use OSContent so we'll have a fully fledged CMS with community features to boot. This will take a week or two at the least. THE PROBLEM: - The above measures are purely technical and won't help the Orion community in and of themselves. OrionSupport's biggest problem so far has been GETTING PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE. JoeO says this better than I could in his rant http://www.theculprit.com/www.orionsupport.com/articles/vision-2.html . BASICALLY if noone contributes the site will continue to move ahead at it's trickling pace. - HOWEVER if lots of people take 5 minutes to note down the problem they just solved, the bug they worked around, their expertise on a particular area, their knowledge of using Orion with software X - we can really produce a very useful support resource very fast indeed. Keep reading for how you can help. THE SOLUTION: I suggest we move discussion of this off the list (the last 48 hours has driven me nuts with the lack of Orion questions and the volume of "me too, Orion support sucks, I'm complaining and not doing anything about it" emails. If you don't like it, join those who are trying to do something about it! I've set up an egroup (still can't bring myself to call it a Yahoo! Group yet) for discussing it here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orionsupport The manifesto of the group is: "A group for the authors and users of OrionSupport ( http://www.orionsupport.com ) to discuss content needed, moves ahead etc. NOTE: This is not a group for people looking for support for Orion. See http://www.orionserver.com for that" I hope you'll all join up and that together we can make OrionSupport an even better resource for the community. -mike gratuitous-OpenSymphony-plug If anyone else has some spare time and wants to help out the most advanced Open Source J2EE project out there, OpenSymphony is it ;) Check it out at http://www.opensymphony.com , help by downloading, using, testing, developing, documenting or even just suggesting ideas - let me know where you can help! For an example site running with ALL the OS technologies on Orion (OSContent for content management, community, user management, SiteMesh for layout, OSCache for speed, Formtags, OSCore for functionality / properties / personalisation) see http://ausralia.internet.com (This plug is sheerly to show off the technology, not for the extra page views - it's Australian new so who is likely to be interested anyway ;)) /gratuitious-OpenSymphony-plug -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Mic
Re: productive comment.
Hello, just wanted to thank you for your valuable and constructive post. We're basically thinking along the very same lines, and have taken actions accordingly. We have been working with a few people on them setting up both standalone support companies and also along with the "pool" idea - things take time though as people in this business are generally busy, but for instance Cadrion (http://support.cadrion.com) has just gotten going now. Another thing in the works is a providers application that will be a part of the orionserver.com site where support / development providers can register themselves and specify specifics about their knowledge areas etc. It'll also be possible to post applications for help/hires needed in the end. So, bottom line: We encourage anyone interested in this to go for it and set up a structure, pooled or standalone. Of course some of you might benefit from cooperating but two's better than none in the end. There is a lot that can be done, even with simple means - for instance, when it comes to bug reports there is a lot that can be done just in form of supplying small, to the point reproducing test cases where missing etc which greatly increases the chance of getting it fixed rapidly. As for the other point; regarding the site we agree that it looks "bad" with too few updates, and this is something we're trying to remedy. We're hiring two more people right now and that should leave some improved room for actions in that category. But by all means - if you have prewritten "success stories" dont hesitate to send them in! ;) As a side note, to kill off some myths; a) We're working fulltime (and then some) on the product, development is also doing well I might add. Some of the next "visible" steps is entering the process of J2EE certification, and also support for some of the new tech out there like the Connector API and such. b) There is no risk of "going bankrupt", Orion as a product is thriving (and it's a positive trend), and Ironflare is a profitable company more than able to support our current development efforts, and then some. Have a nice day! /Magnus Stenman, the Orion team - Original Message - From: "elephantwalker" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:28 AM Subject: RE: productive comment. List, We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output. The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell. Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and iplanet), but had to suffer through their "seminars" which are just over-blown sales meetings. If you are a small company, these are just not the products for you. It would be nice if we could post "success stories" and "hints" directly on the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and don't have the bucks or people to provide support...let *us* provide this service through a "community" process. About 18 months ago I started using the netbeans ide. At the time, its was the only jave 2 ide out there. The netbeans news server was well maintained by a support engineer for netbeans. Later they sold out to Sun, and a lot of that "organic" feeling went away. But the attention that one guy gave to the news service was great, and made using the product a good experience. If we could move the energy prevalent on the orion-interest news service into a "community" web page, maybe this could help all of us out? We could award *points* to the best answers to questions. We could have an ignore button. And yes, we could have a *paid* consultancy service for email questions, phone coaching, and even site visits. Many of the users of orion are independent consultants, so it is not out of the question that a community web service for orion wouldn't fill the gap for orion support. I think one thing missing from the OrionSupport web site was this last bitsome paid service for support. Its also missing from the Ironflare. If you notice, you can buy the product...but even if you wanted to pay for extra support, they don't sell it. If you are reading this at Orion, please consider the McDonald's model. They had a good idea for a hamburger, but how do you put a restaurant on every corner? You franchise the hamburger restaurant idea. Why does'nt Ironflare "franchise" the support for Orion? This way they could continue to write great software, but others would pay them to give great support service for Orion. I have been trying to call these guys for a month now, with no success. So my question is... How do we take the next step? Regards, The elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAI
Re: OrionSupport - if you care about the 'Orion community', read it! WAS RE: productive comment.
Mike, went to the egroup on yahoo, signed up, but could not see any buttons/links to check/post messages. I have a 'howto setup a custom welcome-app' doc to submit for what its worth. Bill - Original Message - From: "Mike Cannon-Brookes" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 7:52 PM Subject: OrionSupport - if you care about the 'Orion community', read it! WAS RE: productive comment. Ok, I feel it's time for me to step in here as one of the 'Joe Co.' people. Firstly, everyone calm down. As Hani said yesterday, every few weeks this whole "Orion support sucks, my boss won't buy Orion without support, I'm having a whinge" thread starts up again. Calm down and read the archives people ;) THE SITUATION: With regard to the future of OrionSupport, here are the things I _know_ are currently happening: - As far as I know it, Joe is on holidays which is probably why he's not answering his email - he hasn't been on IRC for about a week. Everyone just calm down ;) - The domain IS owned by IronFlare / Orion. As far as I know this was done by the previous owners so that it would always be an Orion support site. I have no problems with this at all, the guys have given us free reign over the content / production of the site. - The site IS down now, I'm not sure why. It seems to me Joe's machine has fallen over but we'll know when we get back. Meanwhile there is an archive of all content up to March 18th kindly hosted at www.theculprit.com - There ARE moves in progress to upgrade the site. As Hani said in a previous email it currently runs on lots of OpenSymphony technologies ( http://www.opensymphony.com - see gratuitous-OpenSymphony-plug at the end of this email) like SiteMesh, OSCache and Clickstream. I'm in the process of upgrading it to use OSContent so we'll have a fully fledged CMS with community features to boot. This will take a week or two at the least. THE PROBLEM: - The above measures are purely technical and won't help the Orion community in and of themselves. OrionSupport's biggest problem so far has been GETTING PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE. JoeO says this better than I could in his rant http://www.theculprit.com/www.orionsupport.com/articles/vision-2.html . BASICALLY if noone contributes the site will continue to move ahead at it's trickling pace. - HOWEVER if lots of people take 5 minutes to note down the problem they just solved, the bug they worked around, their expertise on a particular area, their knowledge of using Orion with software X - we can really produce a very useful support resource very fast indeed. Keep reading for how you can help. THE SOLUTION: I suggest we move discussion of this off the list (the last 48 hours has driven me nuts with the lack of Orion questions and the volume of "me too, Orion support sucks, I'm complaining and not doing anything about it" emails. If you don't like it, join those who are trying to do something about it! I've set up an egroup (still can't bring myself to call it a Yahoo! Group yet) for discussing it here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orionsupport The manifesto of the group is: "A group for the authors and users of OrionSupport ( http://www.orionsupport.com ) to discuss content needed, moves ahead etc. NOTE: This is not a group for people looking for support for Orion. See http://www.orionserver.com for that" I hope you'll all join up and that together we can make OrionSupport an even better resource for the community. -mike gratuitous-OpenSymphony-plug If anyone else has some spare time and wants to help out the most advanced Open Source J2EE project out there, OpenSymphony is it ;) Check it out at http://www.opensymphony.com , help by downloading, using, testing, developing, documenting or even just suggesting ideas - let me know where you can help! For an example site running with ALL the OS technologies on Orion (OSContent for content management, community, user management, SiteMesh for layout, OSCache for speed, Formtags, OSCore for functionality / properties / personalisation) see http://ausralia.internet.com (This plug is sheerly to show off the technology, not for the extra page views - it's Australian new so who is likely to be interested anyway ;)) /gratuitious-OpenSymphony-plug -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael J. Cannon Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 10:24 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Fine, but OrionSupport.com is _already_ owned by Joe Co. and they are not responding (I sent them a letter and am sending another off-line). Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: productive comm
Re: productive comment.
Um... a few clarifications. 1) Orionsupport.com as a domain is not owned by me. 2) the domain's content is currently hosted by my development machine. 3) Since I'm such a nice guy,and very reticent in my views, I get attacked on a semi-regular basis by kidz, and the box isn't exactly noncrufty to begin with, so sometimes availability is an issue. 4) No-one pays for it, except me (and a few others,who spend time keeping it up.) 5) I'm working on continuing development; I want to add a forum set, as well as organize a mechanism by which I can be remunerated for my effort and time spent on it. That includes a more stable machine, and no - I'm not trying to position myself as the sole support for orion. By "remuneration," I mean a setup by which everyone who offers support can be rewarded. (And what's more, I want peace on earth, swords beaten into radioactive ploughshares, etc.) BTW, orionsupport is back up; it had a, um, small problem with kernel threads. On Fri, Apr 13, 2001 at 07:24:20PM -0500, Michael J. Cannon wrote: Fine, but OrionSupport.com is _already_ owned by Joe Co. and they are not responding (I sent them a letter and am sending another off-line). Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: productive comment. I'm all for this idea. Orionsupport is a community support effort run on a volunteer basis and I believe that it is hosted on Joseph's development machine using Orion. :) : ) :) I'd be willing to help shoulder some of the costs in moving everything over to an ISP host. There's no need for a new domain, imho... orionsupport has been very open and supportive (no pun intended). I say that we just give those good folks a nice place to put everything without tying up their resources. Community support for Orion has been excellent. The thing I'm worried about is how the Orion developers are doing... is there anything we can do to help out the guys at orionserver/ironflare? - Original Message - From: "Michael J. Cannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:47 PM Subject: RE: productive comment. RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- --- Joseph B. Ottinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://epesh.com/ IT Consultant
RE: productive comment.
I love the enthusiasm, but I'm concerned about the solution. The orionsupport.com site is run and maintained by a small group of people with exactly the same ideas as those being expressed on this list. Let's not create splinter groups which start with a huge burst of enthusiasm and then fizzle out into another resource dead end. Instead, let's focus that energy on taking orionsupport to the level it needs to get to next. It is built on some great open source technology (www.opensymphony.com) which would make it a straightforward exercise to add threaded discussions, article feedback, printer-friendly page views etc. to the articles there. Joe Ottinger, who currently hosts the site, explains what his ideas are for orionsupport in his excellent (and conveniently short!) "Into the Future" article, which is currently available from google's cache at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.orionsupport.com/articles/vision.html+hl=en). So, some feedback to the site would be a good start (once Joe gets it back on-line :o) Invitations for mirroring would ensure the availability we need, a threaded discussion list (which could interact with this list?), client news (you know if you've bought a licence - so tell the rest of us), much greater breadth and depth of support articles, etc. The sentiment from many of you on this list is that (a) orion is a fantastic product, (b) the orion team don't give their website the time/inclination/priority many of us require, (c) between us we possess a lot of knowledge, (d) we're happy to share that with the community. So, in the absence of formal support partners/infrastructure can I suggest that everyone gives orionsupport.com the, umm, support it deserves? Thanks, Dan/tastapod At 00:47 13/04/2001 -0500, you wrote: RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of elephantwalker Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:28 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. List, We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output. The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell. Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and iplanet), but had to suffer through their "seminars" which are just over-blown sales meetings. If you are a small company, these are just not the products for you. It would be nice if we could post "success stories" and "hints" directly on the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and don't have the bucks or people to provide support...let *us* provide this service through a "community" process. About 18 months ago I started using the netbeans ide. At the time, its was the only jave 2 ide out there. The netbeans news server was well maintained by a support engineer for netbeans. Later they sold out to Sun, and a lot of that "organic" feeling went away. But the attention that one guy gave to the news service was great, and made using the product a good experience. If we could move the energy prevalent on the orion-interest news service into a "community" web page, maybe this could help all of us out? We could award *points* to the best answers to questions. We could have an ignore button. And yes, we could have a *paid* consultancy service for email questions, phone coaching, and even site visits. Many of the users of orion are independent consultants, so it is not out of the question that a community web service for orion wouldn't fill the gap for orion support. I think one thing missing from the OrionSupport web site was this last bitsome paid ser
RE: productive comment.
Title: RE: productive comment. Isn't OrionSupport already registered and up and running (well sort of) why not incorporate thee new ideas onto this already existing and well publicized site? Is orionsupport.com not willing to accept community suggestions? It seems to me that if orionsupport.com were improved with additional submissions, improved infrastructure and maybe some backend content management apps (good way to show off some apps running on Orion) then it could become the ultimate source for erm Orionsupport. A karma system for support might be a good start to building a database of questions/incidents that could evolve to a very good FAQ. just my .02 -Larry -Original Message- From: Michael J. Cannon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 1:47 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of elephantwalker Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:28 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. List, We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output. The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell. Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and iplanet), but had to suffer through their seminars which are just over-blown sales meetings. If you are a small company, these are just not the products for you. It would be nice if we could post success stories and hints directly on the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and don't have the bucks or people to provide support...let *us* provide this service through a community process. About 18 months ago I started using the netbeans ide. At the time, its was the only jave 2 ide out there. The netbeans news server was well maintained by a support engineer for netbeans. Later they sold out to Sun, and a lot of that organic feeling went away. But the attention that one guy gave to the news service was great, and made using the product a good experience. If we could move the energy prevalent on the orion-interest news service into a community web page, maybe this could help all of us out? We could award *points* to the best answers to questions. We could have an ignore button. And yes, we could have a *paid* consultancy service for email questions, phone coaching, and even site visits. Many of the users of orion are independent consultants, so it is not out of the question that a community web service for orion wouldn't fill the gap for orion support. I think one thing missing from the OrionSupport web site was this last bitsome paid service for support. Its also missing from the Ironflare. If you notice, you can buy the product...but even if you wanted to pay for extra support, they don't sell it. If you are reading this at Orion, please consider the McDonald's model. They had a good idea for a hamburger, but how do you put a restaurant on every corner? You franchise the hamburger restaurant idea. Why does'nt Ironflare franchise the support for Orion? This way they could continue to write great software, but others would pay them to give great support service for Orion. I have been trying to call these guys for a month now, with no success. So my question is... How do we take the next step? Regards, The elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 5:44 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: productive comment. David, nothing personal, I'm just hanging my reply off yours as it's the latest one in this thread...BUT some of us are very bored
RE: productive comment.
Great point. However, we can help expand on the functionality at orionsupport. But then there's that *paid* support issue. Companies need a place to go so they can *pay* for support when the chips are down, and the alligators are crawling around nipping at their tender parts. The great thing about mysql or borland's open source product is that when the chips are down, you can get *paid* support from thousands of independent consultants. The key bit that will help orion is support that is there for the asking...all you have to do is pay for it. If Joe Ottinger is reading this email, lets add this bit to your site. If you need a consultant to belly up to the bar, and help out, contact the elephantwalker. For the orion team at ironflare, I am willing to pay a *franchising* fee for every support call, email or site visit answered, as long as we get access to the dev team for *bugs*. Regards, the Elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dan North Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:28 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High I love the enthusiasm, but I'm concerned about the solution. The orionsupport.com site is run and maintained by a small group of people with exactly the same ideas as those being expressed on this list. Let's not create splinter groups which start with a huge burst of enthusiasm and then fizzle out into another resource dead end. Instead, let's focus that energy on taking orionsupport to the level it needs to get to next. It is built on some great open source technology (www.opensymphony.com) which would make it a straightforward exercise to add threaded discussions, article feedback, printer-friendly page views etc. to the articles there. Joe Ottinger, who currently hosts the site, explains what his ideas are for orionsupport in his excellent (and conveniently short!) "Into the Future" article, which is currently available from google's cache at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.orionsupport.com/articles/vision.ht ml+hl=en). So, some feedback to the site would be a good start (once Joe gets it back on-line :o) Invitations for mirroring would ensure the availability we need, a threaded discussion list (which could interact with this list?), client news (you know if you've bought a licence - so tell the rest of us), much greater breadth and depth of support articles, etc. The sentiment from many of you on this list is that (a) orion is a fantastic product, (b) the orion team don't give their website the time/inclination/priority many of us require, (c) between us we possess a lot of knowledge, (d) we're happy to share that with the community. So, in the absence of formal support partners/infrastructure can I suggest that everyone gives orionsupport.com the, umm, support it deserves? Thanks, Dan/tastapod At 00:47 13/04/2001 -0500, you wrote: RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of elephantwalker Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:28 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. List, We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output. The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell. Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and iplanet), but had to suffer through their "seminars" which are just over-blown sales meetings. If you are a small company, these are just not the products for you. It would be nice if we could post "success stories" and "hints" directly on the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and don't have the bucks or people to provide s
RE: productive comment.
Yes to all your questions below. I sent the message to let the folks that run OrionSupport and IronFlare know two things: 1) the net is world wide and runs (thrives!) on active content. It wants change and 24/7/365 (or nine-nines or whatever your favorite availability metaphor) availability and responsiveness. An unchanging, corp-supported site is poisonous to the continued existence of a business. As a businessman, dependent on Orion, I know that money talks, so I put my money where my mouth was. 2) Busy as I am (I am the admin guy and Project Manager for hsqldb AND I run my own business, making payroll for 13 people), I understand two realities about business: a) Product is (almost) nothing when it comes to running a business. Customers (and their satisfaction) are EVERYTHING to a business' continued vitality. b) Communication is ALWAYS best. Silence is scary to your customers and potential customers. Orionsupport.COM has, for all intents and purposes gone dark, as has Orion, WITH NO NOTICE AND NO RESPONSE. It is not hard to believe that both these companies do not actively monitor these lists and that is why we have heard nothing. That is a mistake. It is one we have the power to rectify as a community. Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Larry Velez Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 9:50 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Isn't OrionSupport already registered and up and running (well sort of) why not incorporate thee new ideas onto this already existing and well publicized site? Is orionsupport.com not willing to accept community suggestions? It seems to me that if orionsupport.com were improved with additional submissions, improved infrastructure and maybe some backend content management apps (good way to show off some apps running on Orion) then it could become the ultimate source for erm Orionsupport. A karma system for support might be a good start to building a database of questions/incidents that could evolve to a very good FAQ. just my .02 -Larry -Original Message- From: Michael J. Cannon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 1:47 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of elephantwalker Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:28 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. List, We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output. The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell. Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and iplanet), but had to suffer through their "seminars" which are just over-blown sales meetings. If you are a small company, these are just not the products for you. It would be nice if we could post "success stories" and "hints" directly on the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and don't have the bucks or people to provide support...let *us* provide this service through a "community" process. About 18 months ago I started using the netbeans ide. At the time, its was the only jave 2 ide out there. The netbeans news server was well maintained by a support engineer for netbeans. Later they sold out to Sun, and a lot of that "organic" feeling went away. But the attention that one guy gave to the news service was great, and made using the product a good experience. If we could move the energy prevalent on the orion-interest news service into a "community" web page, maybe this could help all of us out? We could award *points* to the best an
RE: productive comment.
Joe, elephantwalker, et.al. I was going to do a 'me too!' followed by a listing, but that may not be list-appropriate (MYOWN_PERSONAL_RULE: if you have the question: Is this SPAM? ASK THE LIST!) So, how do we do this, and not offend the users of the list (our budding community)? My response to elephantwalker was meant as an impetus for more discussion. More prods to follow tonite. Oh, yeah: ME, TOO! heh, heh Michael J. Cannon President Ubiquicomm mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project Manager hsqldb.org mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of elephantwalker Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 11:35 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Great point. However, we can help expand on the functionality at orionsupport. But then there's that *paid* support issue. Companies need a place to go so they can *pay* for support when the chips are down, and the alligators are crawling around nipping at their tender parts. The great thing about mysql or borland's open source product is that when the chips are down, you can get *paid* support from thousands of independent consultants. The key bit that will help orion is support that is there for the asking...all you have to do is pay for it. If Joe Ottinger is reading this email, lets add this bit to your site. If you need a consultant to belly up to the bar, and help out, contact the elephantwalker. For the orion team at ironflare, I am willing to pay a *franchising* fee for every support call, email or site visit answered, as long as we get access to the dev team for *bugs*. Regards, the Elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dan North Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:28 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High I love the enthusiasm, but I'm concerned about the solution. The orionsupport.com site is run and maintained by a small group of people with exactly the same ideas as those being expressed on this list. Let's not create splinter groups which start with a huge burst of enthusiasm and then fizzle out into another resource dead end. Instead, let's focus that energy on taking orionsupport to the level it needs to get to next. It is built on some great open source technology (www.opensymphony.com) which would make it a straightforward exercise to add threaded discussions, article feedback, printer-friendly page views etc. to the articles there. Joe Ottinger, who currently hosts the site, explains what his ideas are for orionsupport in his excellent (and conveniently short!) "Into the Future" article, which is currently available from google's cache at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.orionsupport.com/articles /vision.ht ml+hl=en). So, some feedback to the site would be a good start (once Joe gets it back on-line :o) Invitations for mirroring would ensure the availability we need, a threaded discussion list (which could interact with this list?), client news (you know if you've bought a licence - so tell the rest of us), much greater breadth and depth of support articles, etc. The sentiment from many of you on this list is that (a) orion is a fantastic product, (b) the orion team don't give their website the time/inclination/priority many of us require, (c) between us we possess a lot of knowledge, (d) we're happy to share that with the community. So, in the absence of formal support partners/infrastructure can I suggest that everyone gives orionsupport.com the, umm, support it deserves? Thanks, Dan/tastapod At 00:47 13/04/2001 -0500, you wrote: RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: productive comment.
'access' to the dev team? You mean that if you think its a bug then you should be able to get on the phone with developers as if they were tech support people? Whats wrong with Bugzilla and a quick development team? -Original Message- From: elephantwalker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 9:35 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Great point. However, we can help expand on the functionality at orionsupport. But then there's that *paid* support issue. Companies need a place to go so they can *pay* for support when the chips are down, and the alligators are crawling around nipping at their tender parts. The great thing about mysql or borland's open source product is that when the chips are down, you can get *paid* support from thousands of independent consultants. The key bit that will help orion is support that is there for the asking...all you have to do is pay for it. If Joe Ottinger is reading this email, lets add this bit to your site. If you need a consultant to belly up to the bar, and help out, contact the elephantwalker. For the orion team at ironflare, I am willing to pay a *franchising* fee for every support call, email or site visit answered, as long as we get access to the dev team for *bugs*. Regards, the Elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dan North Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:28 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High I love the enthusiasm, but I'm concerned about the solution. The orionsupport.com site is run and maintained by a small group of people with exactly the same ideas as those being expressed on this list. Let's not create splinter groups which start with a huge burst of enthusiasm and then fizzle out into another resource dead end. Instead, let's focus that energy on taking orionsupport to the level it needs to get to next. It is built on some great open source technology (www.opensymphony.com) which would make it a straightforward exercise to add threaded discussions, article feedback, printer-friendly page views etc. to the articles there. Joe Ottinger, who currently hosts the site, explains what his ideas are for orionsupport in his excellent (and conveniently short!) "Into the Future" article, which is currently available from google's cache at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.orionsupport.com/articles/vision.ht ml+hl=en). So, some feedback to the site would be a good start (once Joe gets it back on-line :o) Invitations for mirroring would ensure the availability we need, a threaded discussion list (which could interact with this list?), client news (you know if you've bought a licence - so tell the rest of us), much greater breadth and depth of support articles, etc. The sentiment from many of you on this list is that (a) orion is a fantastic product, (b) the orion team don't give their website the time/inclination/priority many of us require, (c) between us we possess a lot of knowledge, (d) we're happy to share that with the community. So, in the absence of formal support partners/infrastructure can I suggest that everyone gives orionsupport.com the, umm, support it deserves? Thanks, Dan/tastapod At 00:47 13/04/2001 -0500, you wrote: RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of elephantwalker Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:28 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. List, We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output. The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell. Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and iplanet), but had
RE: productive comment.
absolutely...use Bugzilla, and a quick dev team. However, think of the *franchise* idea. The consultants are franchised by Ironflare to give *customer support*, which Ironflare can't provide. But other than the name, what do you get for your *franchise fee*. There's got to be some access. The reason is the ETF, or Estimated Time to Fix for a bug. Although bugzilla is fine for most bugs which have workarounds, sometimes there are bugs which are mission critical. In those cases we need to know when the bug is going to fixed, and only orion can make that commitment. I have written a use case for each support type. Notice that this support is well beyond anything that Ironflare is currently offering. Here's each use case ... *paid email support* 1. user logs in to orionsupport or where ever. 2. posts an email support issue. Offers $50 to resolve issue by email. 3. consultant logins into support que, sees the offer, and makes a bid (in this case time, time to solve and price). 4. user agrees to bid, and consultant responds with answer. In this case, there is no need for access to the Orion developers. But then we have step 5. 5. bug is reported, there is no workaround (that would have been provided in 4 above), and bug is reported in bugzilla. For and extra $50, user gets a detailed status of the bug (more detail than provided in bugzilla status) and an ETF (estimated time to fix). This requires access to the Orion development manager, since only they can make such a commitment. *paid phone call support* 1. user logs into orionsupport or where ever. 2. posts an request for phone call support, with a description of the problem. Offers $250 to resolve the issue. 3. consultant logins into support que, sees the offer, and makes a bid (time to solve, and price). 4. user agrees to bid, and consultant or user makes the phone call. 5. development access required for ETF. *paid consultant visit support* 1. user logs into orionsupport or where ever. 2. posts an request for site visit support, with a description of the problem. Offers $1,500/day to resolve the issue. 3. consultant logins into support que, sees the offer, and makes a bid (time to solve, and price). 4. user agrees to bid, and consult or user make arrangements for visit. 5. development access required for ETF. Regards, the elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Aaron Tavistock Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 2:01 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. 'access' to the dev team? You mean that if you think its a bug then you should be able to get on the phone with developers as if they were tech support people? Whats wrong with Bugzilla and a quick development team? -Original Message- From: elephantwalker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 9:35 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Great point. However, we can help expand on the functionality at orionsupport. But then there's that *paid* support issue. Companies need a place to go so they can *pay* for support when the chips are down, and the alligators are crawling around nipping at their tender parts. The great thing about mysql or borland's open source product is that when the chips are down, you can get *paid* support from thousands of independent consultants. The key bit that will help orion is support that is there for the asking...all you have to do is pay for it. If Joe Ottinger is reading this email, lets add this bit to your site. If you need a consultant to belly up to the bar, and help out, contact the elephantwalker. For the orion team at ironflare, I am willing to pay a *franchising* fee for every support call, email or site visit answered, as long as we get access to the dev team for *bugs*. Regards, the Elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dan North Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:28 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High I love the enthusiasm, but I'm concerned about the solution. The orionsupport.com site is run and maintained by a small group of people with exactly the same ideas as those being expressed on this list. Let's not create splinter groups which start with a huge burst of enthusiasm and then fizzle out into another resource dead end. Instead, let's focus that energy on taking orionsupport to the level it needs to get to next. It is built on some great open source technology (www.opensymphony.com) which would make it a straightforward exercise to add threaded discussions, article feedback, printer-friendly page views etc. to the articles there. Joe Ottinger, who currently hosts the site, explains what his ideas are for orionsupport in his excellent (and conveniently short!) "Into the Future" article, which is currently available from google's cache at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.orionsupport.co
RE: productive comment.
Way to go, elephantwalker... More ideas: 1) Since we are using Orion's/IronFlare's/OrionServer's IP (the corporate ID and product names are the most basic IP a corp has) we agree to some kind of quals and independently verified audits (other than 'pay-for-play') that can then be 'hung' on our own corporate websites (which also agree to dedicate a small percentageof space to mirroring and a small amount of BW to downloads) 2) there is an agreed 'spread' for use and a pool of money from the 'franchise fees' that Orion and its agents agree to use to help the community as a whole. An additional portion is dedicated to the frachisors 3) everything is managed by a separate, neutral server. References/leads (especially for on-sites) are furnished on a geographic basis first, than, after a suitable time, distributed to a wider and wider pool 4) qualified franchisors, under restrictions, are contracted by Orion to 'act in their stead' to answer, for free, user questions, with no 'lead-fishing' or commercial re-direction allowed 5) the system operates 24/7/365...'franchisors' pony up the cash - up front - agree to a fixed time schedule for certification and submission to the auditors and operate/agree to a 'three strikes' -also audited- rule, with reasonable requirements. Currently, I am involved with 2 partnerships that operate under a variation of this combined with a couple of elephantwalker's use cases: IBM and CA (on different platforms). I have dedicated personnel specifically on payroll to manage and comply with these agreements. In another business that I an investor in (and help with managing), Bang and Olufsen manages their partnerships and distributors in a similar manner. Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of elephantwalker Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 4:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. absolutely...use Bugzilla, and a quick dev team. However, think of the *franchise* idea. The consultants are franchised by Ironflare to give *customer support*, which Ironflare can't provide. But other than the name, what do you get for your *franchise fee*. There's got to be some access. The reason is the ETF, or Estimated Time to Fix for a bug. Although bugzilla is fine for most bugs which have workarounds, sometimes there are bugs which are mission critical. In those cases we need to know when the bug is going to fixed, and only orion can make that commitment. I have written a use case for each support type. Notice that this support is well beyond anything that Ironflare is currently offering. Here's each use case ... *paid email support* 1. user logs in to orionsupport or where ever. 2. posts an email support issue. Offers $50 to resolve issue by email. 3. consultant logins into support que, sees the offer, and makes a bid (in this case time, time to solve and price). 4. user agrees to bid, and consultant responds with answer. In this case, there is no need for access to the Orion developers. But then we have step 5. 5. bug is reported, there is no workaround (that would have been provided in 4 above), and bug is reported in bugzilla. For and extra $50, user gets a detailed status of the bug (more detail than provided in bugzilla status) and an ETF (estimated time to fix). This requires access to the Orion development manager, since only they can make such a commitment. *paid phone call support* 1. user logs into orionsupport or where ever. 2. posts an request for phone call support, with a description of the problem. Offers $250 to resolve the issue. 3. consultant logins into support que, sees the offer, and makes a bid (time to solve, and price). 4. user agrees to bid, and consultant or user makes the phone call. 5. development access required for ETF. *paid consultant visit support* 1. user logs into orionsupport or where ever. 2. posts an request for site visit support, with a description of the problem. Offers $1,500/day to resolve the issue. 3. consultant logins into support que, sees the offer, and makes a bid (time to solve, and price). 4. user agrees to bid, and consult or user make arrangements for visit. 5. development access required for ETF. Regards, the elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Aaron Tavistock Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 2:01 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. 'access' to the dev team? You mean that if you think its a bug then you should be able to get on the phone with developers as if they were tech support people? Whats wrong with Bugzilla and a quick development team? -Original Message- From: elephantwalker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 9:35 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Great point. However, we can help expand on the functionality
RE: productive comment.
Fine, but OrionSupport.com is _already_ owned by Joe Co. and they are not responding (I sent them a letter and am sending another off-line). Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: productive comment. I'm all for this idea. Orionsupport is a community support effort run on a volunteer basis and I believe that it is hosted on Joseph's development machine using Orion. :) : ) :) I'd be willing to help shoulder some of the costs in moving everything over to an ISP host. There's no need for a new domain, imho... orionsupport has been very open and supportive (no pun intended). I say that we just give those good folks a nice place to put everything without tying up their resources. Community support for Orion has been excellent. The thing I'm worried about is how the Orion developers are doing... is there anything we can do to help out the guys at orionserver/ironflare? - Original Message - From: "Michael J. Cannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:47 PM Subject: RE: productive comment. RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: productive comment.
Another bit of info: From NSI WHOIS: http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=orionsupport.com; STRING=Search Magnus owns it now. NOW WHAT? Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: productive comment. I'm all for this idea. Orionsupport is a community support effort run on a volunteer basis and I believe that it is hosted on Joseph's development machine using Orion. :) : ) :) I'd be willing to help shoulder some of the costs in moving everything over to an ISP host. There's no need for a new domain, imho... orionsupport has been very open and supportive (no pun intended). I say that we just give those good folks a nice place to put everything without tying up their resources. Community support for Orion has been excellent. The thing I'm worried about is how the Orion developers are doing... is there anything we can do to help out the guys at orionserver/ironflare? - Original Message - From: "Michael J. Cannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:47 PM Subject: RE: productive comment. RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
OrionSupport - if you care about the 'Orion community', read it! WAS RE: productive comment.
Ok, I feel it's time for me to step in here as one of the 'Joe Co.' people. Firstly, everyone calm down. As Hani said yesterday, every few weeks this whole "Orion support sucks, my boss won't buy Orion without support, I'm having a whinge" thread starts up again. Calm down and read the archives people ;) THE SITUATION: With regard to the future of OrionSupport, here are the things I _know_ are currently happening: - As far as I know it, Joe is on holidays which is probably why he's not answering his email - he hasn't been on IRC for about a week. Everyone just calm down ;) - The domain IS owned by IronFlare / Orion. As far as I know this was done by the previous owners so that it would always be an Orion support site. I have no problems with this at all, the guys have given us free reign over the content / production of the site. - The site IS down now, I'm not sure why. It seems to me Joe's machine has fallen over but we'll know when we get back. Meanwhile there is an archive of all content up to March 18th kindly hosted at www.theculprit.com - There ARE moves in progress to upgrade the site. As Hani said in a previous email it currently runs on lots of OpenSymphony technologies ( http://www.opensymphony.com - see gratuitous-OpenSymphony-plug at the end of this email) like SiteMesh, OSCache and Clickstream. I'm in the process of upgrading it to use OSContent so we'll have a fully fledged CMS with community features to boot. This will take a week or two at the least. THE PROBLEM: - The above measures are purely technical and won't help the Orion community in and of themselves. OrionSupport's biggest problem so far has been GETTING PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE. JoeO says this better than I could in his rant http://www.theculprit.com/www.orionsupport.com/articles/vision-2.html . BASICALLY if noone contributes the site will continue to move ahead at it's trickling pace. - HOWEVER if lots of people take 5 minutes to note down the problem they just solved, the bug they worked around, their expertise on a particular area, their knowledge of using Orion with software X - we can really produce a very useful support resource very fast indeed. Keep reading for how you can help. THE SOLUTION: I suggest we move discussion of this off the list (the last 48 hours has driven me nuts with the lack of Orion questions and the volume of "me too, Orion support sucks, I'm complaining and not doing anything about it" emails. If you don't like it, join those who are trying to do something about it! I've set up an egroup (still can't bring myself to call it a Yahoo! Group yet) for discussing it here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orionsupport The manifesto of the group is: "A group for the authors and users of OrionSupport ( http://www.orionsupport.com ) to discuss content needed, moves ahead etc. NOTE: This is not a group for people looking for support for Orion. See http://www.orionserver.com for that" I hope you'll all join up and that together we can make OrionSupport an even better resource for the community. -mike gratuitous-OpenSymphony-plug If anyone else has some spare time and wants to help out the most advanced Open Source J2EE project out there, OpenSymphony is it ;) Check it out at http://www.opensymphony.com , help by downloading, using, testing, developing, documenting or even just suggesting ideas - let me know where you can help! For an example site running with ALL the OS technologies on Orion (OSContent for content management, community, user management, SiteMesh for layout, OSCache for speed, Formtags, OSCore for functionality / properties / personalisation) see http://ausralia.internet.com (This plug is sheerly to show off the technology, not for the extra page views - it's Australian new so who is likely to be interested anyway ;)) /gratuitious-OpenSymphony-plug -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael J. Cannon Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 10:24 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Fine, but OrionSupport.com is _already_ owned by Joe Co. and they are not responding (I sent them a letter and am sending another off-line). Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: productive comment. I'm all for this idea. Orionsupport is a community support effort run on a volunteer basis and I believe that it is hosted on Joseph's development machine using Orion. :) : ) :) I'd be willing to help shoulder some of the costs in moving everything over to an ISP host. There's no need for a new domain, imho... orionsupport has been very open and supportive (no pun intended). I say that we just give those good folks a nice place to put everything without tying up their resources. Community support for Orion
RE: productive comment.
I think Magnus has always owned this...at least as long as I have been using it. The plan still applies. We need *an agreement* for franchising with IronFlare. Next week is easter week in Europe, so I don't think anything can happen until the holidays are over. A recent post showed that somebody is bundling orion server with their software and selling it, so it is possible to get an agreement with Ironflare. I am buying a license for our deployment next week, so I will be talking to Magnus soon. There is definitely activity from their developers on the bugzilla database, so they are alive and kicking. The lose of the orionsupport server could just be an issue with the holiday's or hardware. Nobody's checking the server, and it just keeled over. I have done a lot of customer support before, and what people want is communication more than anything. The lack of communication isn't altogether uncommon from a development group. I think a *cyber* support organization is just what they need. I can't get a handle on how many orion users there are, but lately I have seen a lot of SF Bay area url's on the list, and that is very good news for Orion. I mean...this is where the money is. regards, The elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael J. Cannon Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 6:07 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High Another bit of info: From NSI WHOIS: http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=orionsupport.com; STRING=Search Magnus owns it now. NOW WHAT? Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: productive comment. I'm all for this idea. Orionsupport is a community support effort run on a volunteer basis and I believe that it is hosted on Joseph's development machine using Orion. :) : ) :) I'd be willing to help shoulder some of the costs in moving everything over to an ISP host. There's no need for a new domain, imho... orionsupport has been very open and supportive (no pun intended). I say that we just give those good folks a nice place to put everything without tying up their resources. Community support for Orion has been excellent. The thing I'm worried about is how the Orion developers are doing... is there anything we can do to help out the guys at orionserver/ironflare? - Original Message - From: "Michael J. Cannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:47 PM Subject: RE: productive comment. RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: productive comment.
I just wanted to point out that despite the Orion team's silence on this list, over the last couple months there has been a lot of bugzilla activity. Development is clearly moving forward, so it's not time to jump ship yet :-) While a weekly "hey, here's what's up at Ironflare" letter to this list would be nice, I think just simply echoing all bugzilla update mail to this list would go a long ways towards giving us the feeling that development has not stalled. Especially if this trend towards less frequent, bigger updates continues. Anxiously awaiting 1.4.8, Jeff
RE: productive comment.
I was under the impression that the domain has always been owned by the Orion organization. They just pointed it at whoever was willing to maintain the community site. I have a suggestion. Lets take a slice of a Wiki system, say the Portland Pattern Repository at http://www.c2.com. I think the Wiki nature will lend itself well to a community group like this. It will also act as a FAQ-O-MATIC. The natural starting point is: http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?OrionServer Jeff -Original Message- From: Michael J. Cannon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 6:07 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High Another bit of info: From NSI WHOIS: http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=orio nsupport.com STRING=Search Magnus owns it now. NOW WHAT? Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: productive comment. I'm all for this idea. Orionsupport is a community support effort run on a volunteer basis and I believe that it is hosted on Joseph's development machine using Orion. :) : ) :) I'd be willing to help shoulder some of the costs in moving everything over to an ISP host. There's no need for a new domain, imho... orionsupport has been very open and supportive (no pun intended). I say that we just give those good folks a nice place to put everything without tying up their resources. Community support for Orion has been excellent. The thing I'm worried about is how the Orion developers are doing... is there anything we can do to help out the guys at orionserver/ironflare? - Original Message - From: "Michael J. Cannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:47 PM Subject: RE: productive comment. RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: OrionSupport - if you care about the 'Orion community', read it! WAS RE: productive comment.
Finally...will the REAL Mike Cannon please stand up? He has. Patience, folks. Michael J. Cannon Project Manager - hsqldb.org (formerly HyperSonicSQL) mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Mike Cannon-Brookes Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 8:52 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: OrionSupport - if you care about the 'Orion community', read it! WAS RE: productive comment. Ok, I feel it's time for me to step in here as one of the 'Joe Co.' people. Firstly, everyone calm down. As Hani said yesterday, every few weeks this whole "Orion support sucks, my boss won't buy Orion without support, I'm having a whinge" thread starts up again. Calm down and read the archives people ;) THE SITUATION: With regard to the future of OrionSupport, here are the things I _know_ are currently happening: - As far as I know it, Joe is on holidays which is probably why he's not answering his email - he hasn't been on IRC for about a week. Everyone just calm down ;) - The domain IS owned by IronFlare / Orion. As far as I know this was done by the previous owners so that it would always be an Orion support site. I have no problems with this at all, the guys have given us free reign over the content / production of the site. - The site IS down now, I'm not sure why. It seems to me Joe's machine has fallen over but we'll know when we get back. Meanwhile there is an archive of all content up to March 18th kindly hosted at www.theculprit.com - There ARE moves in progress to upgrade the site. As Hani said in a previous email it currently runs on lots of OpenSymphony technologies ( http://www.opensymphony.com - see gratuitous-OpenSymphony-plug at the end of this email) like SiteMesh, OSCache and Clickstream. I'm in the process of upgrading it to use OSContent so we'll have a fully fledged CMS with community features to boot. This will take a week or two at the least. THE PROBLEM: - The above measures are purely technical and won't help the Orion community in and of themselves. OrionSupport's biggest problem so far has been GETTING PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE. JoeO says this better than I could in his rant http://www.theculprit.com/www.orionsupport.com/articles/vision-2.html . BASICALLY if noone contributes the site will continue to move ahead at it's trickling pace. - HOWEVER if lots of people take 5 minutes to note down the problem they just solved, the bug they worked around, their expertise on a particular area, their knowledge of using Orion with software X - we can really produce a very useful support resource very fast indeed. Keep reading for how you can help. THE SOLUTION: I suggest we move discussion of this off the list (the last 48 hours has driven me nuts with the lack of Orion questions and the volume of "me too, Orion support sucks, I'm complaining and not doing anything about it" emails. If you don't like it, join those who are trying to do something about it! I've set up an egroup (still can't bring myself to call it a Yahoo! Group yet) for discussing it here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orionsupport The manifesto of the group is: "A group for the authors and users of OrionSupport ( http://www.orionsupport.com ) to discuss content needed, moves ahead etc. NOTE: This is not a group for people looking for support for Orion. See http://www.orionserver.com for that" I hope you'll all join up and that together we can make OrionSupport an even better resource for the community. -mike gratuitous-OpenSymphony-plug If anyone else has some spare time and wants to help out the most advanced Open Source J2EE project out there, OpenSymphony is it ;) Check it out at http://www.opensymphony.com , help by downloading, using, testing, developing, documenting or even just suggesting ideas - let me know where you can help! For an example site running with ALL the OS technologies on Orion (OSContent for content management, community, user management, SiteMesh for layout, OSCache for speed, Formtags, OSCore for functionality / properties / personalisation) see http://ausralia.internet.com (This plug is sheerly to show off the technology, not for the extra page views - it's Australian new so who is likely to be interested anyway ;)) /gratuitious-OpenSymphony-plug -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael J. Cannon Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 10:24 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Fine, but OrionSupport.com is _already_ owned by Joe Co. and they are not responding (I sent them a letter and am sending another off-line). Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: produc
RE: productive comment.
Again, patience...I am quieting on-list until I get clearance from the involved parties (or they have a chance to speak for themselves). Michael J. Cannon Project Manager, COO hsqldb.org (formerly HyperSonicSQL) mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jeff Schnitzer Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 9:09 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. I was under the impression that the domain has always been owned by the Orion organization. They just pointed it at whoever was willing to maintain the community site. I have a suggestion. Lets take a slice of a Wiki system, say the Portland Pattern Repository at http://www.c2.com. I think the Wiki nature will lend itself well to a community group like this. It will also act as a FAQ-O-MATIC. The natural starting point is: http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?OrionServer Jeff -Original Message- From: Michael J. Cannon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 6:07 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. Importance: High Another bit of info: From NSI WHOIS: http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=orio nsupport.com STRING=Search Magnus owns it now. NOW WHAT? Michael J. Cannon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stan Ng Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 5:37 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: Re: productive comment. I'm all for this idea. Orionsupport is a community support effort run on a volunteer basis and I believe that it is hosted on Joseph's development machine using Orion. :) : ) :) I'd be willing to help shoulder some of the costs in moving everything over to an ISP host. There's no need for a new domain, imho... orionsupport has been very open and supportive (no pun intended). I say that we just give those good folks a nice place to put everything without tying up their resources. Community support for Orion has been excellent. The thing I'm worried about is how the Orion developers are doing... is there anything we can do to help out the guys at orionserver/ironflare? - Original Message - From: "Michael J. Cannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Orion-Interest" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:47 PM Subject: RE: productive comment. RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: productive comment.
I agree with the comment below, but only to a point. I had another developer in our company raise concern over orion because of a database connection error that is thrown in the FAQ section of the orionserver.com website. I expressed to him, and I firmly believe, that I'd much rather have them working on new features and the occasional bug that pops up than updating/fixing/making the web site great. I agree with the PR that a good website provides, but great PR with a bad product isn't what we as developers want, at least I hope not. Maybe I'm among the minority, but the pocketbooks of our company rely on our technical expertise when it comes to making decisions, and I'm alot more comfortable going with Orion than Jrun, which is at least somewhat close in price range, just on the fact of standards compliance. I know that JRun 3.1 is J2EE certified, but we had nothing but headaches trying to get it to work. Going to Orion was like a dream come true, and as long as they continue! with a product that is easy to use and follows the spec, I'm all for it. Jeff Hubbach. On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 20:43:34 -0400 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: UPDATE THE WEB SITE ONCE A WEEK include simple news...even just a paragraph or to. perhaps explaining latest updates (in betas). If you have no newsadd link to new clients/web sites...I'm sure ...this would take about 10 minutes a week and would go a long way in helping me convince people to buy it...believe it or not. I know it has no relevance on the quality of the product, but it would make a huge difference in giving the people I work with confidence in Orion's future. This is necessary because orion is not open source and we can not update the orionserver.com site as a community. I know this is what orionsupport is for, however, when I have to get people to commit money to a product simple things go a long way. I hope this was a more productive comment.
RE: productive comment.
List, We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output. The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell. Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and iplanet), but had to suffer through their "seminars" which are just over-blown sales meetings. If you are a small company, these are just not the products for you. It would be nice if we could post "success stories" and "hints" directly on the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and don't have the bucks or people to provide support...let *us* provide this service through a "community" process. About 18 months ago I started using the netbeans ide. At the time, its was the only jave 2 ide out there. The netbeans news server was well maintained by a support engineer for netbeans. Later they sold out to Sun, and a lot of that "organic" feeling went away. But the attention that one guy gave to the news service was great, and made using the product a good experience. If we could move the energy prevalent on the orion-interest news service into a "community" web page, maybe this could help all of us out? We could award *points* to the best answers to questions. We could have an ignore button. And yes, we could have a *paid* consultancy service for email questions, phone coaching, and even site visits. Many of the users of orion are independent consultants, so it is not out of the question that a community web service for orion wouldn't fill the gap for orion support. I think one thing missing from the OrionSupport web site was this last bitsome paid service for support. Its also missing from the Ironflare. If you notice, you can buy the product...but even if you wanted to pay for extra support, they don't sell it. If you are reading this at Orion, please consider the McDonald's model. They had a good idea for a hamburger, but how do you put a restaurant on every corner? You franchise the hamburger restaurant idea. Why does'nt Ironflare "franchise" the support for Orion? This way they could continue to write great software, but others would pay them to give great support service for Orion. I have been trying to call these guys for a month now, with no success. So my question is... How do we take the next step? Regards, The elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 5:44 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: productive comment. David, nothing personal, I'm just hanging my reply off yours as it's the latest one in this thread...BUT some of us are very bored of this thread popping up every few weeks. Sure, Orion hasn't released a new version in a couple of months now (I think), and I'm as desperately eager for 1.4.8 as anyone here. Why does this always translate to 'Orion is tanking'? I know where you are coming from. I love orion. The problem I have is when I have to rationalize its use to others. Here's the most basic recommendation that I think would go a long way (believe it or not) UPDATE THE WEB SITE ONCE A WEEK include simple news...even just a paragraph or to. perhaps explaining latest updates (in betas). If you have no newsadd link to new clients/web sites...I'm sure ...this would take about 10 minutes a week and would go a long way in helping me convince people to buy it...believe it or not. I know it has no relevance on the quality of the product, but it would make a huge difference in giving the people I work with confidence in Orion's future. This is necessary because orion is not open source and we can not update the orionserver.com site as a community. I know this is what orionsupport is for, however, when I have to get people to commit money to a product simple things go a long way. I hope this was a more productive comment.
RE: productive comment.
It would be nice if we could post "success stories" and "hints" directly on the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and don't have the bucks or people to provide support...let *us* provide this service through a "community" process. A great idea, and it's the idea behind orionsupport. A lot of people say 'lets contribute', but when push comes to shove, what tends to happen is that that enthusiasm is dulled by actually having to do work, and that just being enthusiastic isn't enough. Orionsupport hasn't gone anywhere, from what I can see the server is down for the time being, but I'm sure it'll be back up soon. It'd be good if people who have servers/bandwidth to donate could get in touch with those who run orionsupport and offer mirroring services. Also, why not write a nice J2ee app that lets people post 'success stories', or even 'hints and tips'? If people had actual content/code to contribute, I can't imagine that orionsupport will refuse to host it! They even took my crappy hastily written DataSourceUserManager notes and posted them! Hani
RE: productive comment.
RE: How do we take the next step? A sig is, classically a _S_pecial _I_nterest _G_roup, in the computer culture. orionsig.net, orionsig.org and orionsig.com are available. Pick 'em. Don't need a license from anyone to be a 'general purpose special interest group,' as long as you don't purport to be in any 'special' circumstance or make unfounded claims or use words that have obvious legal meaning. I've got a fixed IP, but it's on a slow and restricted connection. I know an ISP that is easy to work with, charges $39/mo, knows how to run services for Java, and is relatively small and responsive, and accesses through a multiple T3 (second-tier backbone access, they're actually a small CLEC). They also are an accredited registrar for all the above TLD's (turn-around is typically about 24 hours to propagate through BIND/DNS and the internic). I'd be willing to donate the first six months worth of host costs, and, after 30 days, pay for the Orion license myself (gotta run the site on Orion, don't we?) with these guys or anyone better. Let's just DO IT. Anyone else want to help? Michael Cannon mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of elephantwalker Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:28 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: RE: productive comment. List, We have an organic community here, but the list has been our only output. The support from the company is lacking. Orionsupport seems to have been a good outlet for some, but appears to be down for a spell. Many here have used the other commercial packages (I have used weblogic and iplanet), but had to suffer through their "seminars" which are just over-blown sales meetings. If you are a small company, these are just not the products for you. It would be nice if we could post "success stories" and "hints" directly on the OrionServer web site. If they want to commercialize the product, and don't have the bucks or people to provide support...let *us* provide this service through a "community" process. About 18 months ago I started using the netbeans ide. At the time, its was the only jave 2 ide out there. The netbeans news server was well maintained by a support engineer for netbeans. Later they sold out to Sun, and a lot of that "organic" feeling went away. But the attention that one guy gave to the news service was great, and made using the product a good experience. If we could move the energy prevalent on the orion-interest news service into a "community" web page, maybe this could help all of us out? We could award *points* to the best answers to questions. We could have an ignore button. And yes, we could have a *paid* consultancy service for email questions, phone coaching, and even site visits. Many of the users of orion are independent consultants, so it is not out of the question that a community web service for orion wouldn't fill the gap for orion support. I think one thing missing from the OrionSupport web site was this last bitsome paid service for support. Its also missing from the Ironflare. If you notice, you can buy the product...but even if you wanted to pay for extra support, they don't sell it. If you are reading this at Orion, please consider the McDonald's model. They had a good idea for a hamburger, but how do you put a restaurant on every corner? You franchise the hamburger restaurant idea. Why does'nt Ironflare "franchise" the support for Orion? This way they could continue to write great software, but others would pay them to give great support service for Orion. I have been trying to call these guys for a month now, with no success. So my question is... How do we take the next step? Regards, The elephantwalker -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 5:44 PM To: Orion-Interest Subject: productive comment. David, nothing personal, I'm just hanging my reply off yours as it's the latest one in this thread...BUT some of us are very bored of this thread popping up every few weeks. Sure, Orion hasn't released a new version in a couple of months now (I think), and I'm as desperately eager for 1.4.8 as anyone here. Why does this always translate to 'Orion is tanking'? I know where you are coming from. I love orion. The problem I have is when I have to rationalize its use to others. Here's the most basic recommendation that I think would go a long way (believe it or not) UPDATE THE WEB SITE ONCE A WEEK include simple news...even just a paragraph or to. perhaps explaining latest updates (in betas). If you have no newsadd link to new clients/web sites...I'm sure ...this would take about 10 minutes a week and would go a long way in helping me convince people to buy it...believe it or not. I
