Forum OpenACS Q&A: OpenACS assessment...

Hello everybody,

I am currently trying to convince quite a serious company in Germany to use OpenACS as their new technological platform. Up until today they were relying on Lotus, but want to switch to open source. They are considering OpenACS and PHPNuke. They want to offer the following services for their community: community management, knowledge management, expert management, collaborative work/research, social networking.

Here are some questions that they want me to answer, before they decide. Maybe some people can give some input on the different points. I am posting all the points so that people know with what kind of questions such a company bothers... This might also be the beginning of a technological marketing section at OACS, because I guess that a lot of people need to explain similar stuff to their customers.

#####

A. How sustainable is the existence of OpenACS?

1. ArsDigita is not on the market anymore.

My *personal* interpretation:

They didn’t really went out of business, but got bought by RedHat. Their decline was obvious, though and they hit the “financially” right deal in the last second. This decline was due to their new licensing model (ADPL) an the adoption of Java.

Questions:

What is the current situation of Java vs. other scripting languages like TCL or PHP. I have the *feeling* that scripting languages are increasingly popular for web applications or do I just have a limited insight?

2. Google shows more results for PHPNuke than for OpenACS. Is the status of OACS rather like OpenCMS, which means that it is not yet that widely adopted?

Questions:

How does PHPNuke compare to OpenACS especially concerning what they want to accomplish with it (see above)? What are the pros and cons?

B. How future oriented is the technology?

1. The original ArsDigita Technology was switched to Java. Is TCL getting obsolete?

My *personal* interpretation:

It is more about scripting languages like PHP and TCL versus object oriented languages like Java. As they are considering PHP as an alternative the Java question is not too relevant although it would be interesting to know what technology bigger companies tend to adopt at the moment. Anyone working for Accenture or IBM?

Questions:

How quickly can a php programmer get used to tcl? A good case would be the eLane project, as their developers most probably knew more about php than tcl. How deeply rooted is tcl in the educational curriculum?

2. Postgres is successively losing to MySQL. Is MySQL’s performance already better in some areas?

Questions:

Once upon a time we had a document saying why MySQL was not good enough for OpenACS. Is this still valid? My personal doubts are steadily increasing from zero doubts back then to some doubts today.

3. Who is maintaining AOLServer?

My *personal* interpretation:

Obviously it is being maintained by some AOLServer gurus and the open source community. The bigger questions are about adoption and performance.

Questions:

How does the adoption of AOLServer inside AOL look like at the moment? I haven’t heard anything about AOLServer on these forums for quite some time. Is this a good or a bad sign? Did performance of AOLServer hit a point where it can’t really be improved? Why are we still using or recommending AOLServer ad+13?

C. Of which quality is OACS?

1. How does the datamodel look like (short draft)?

Question:

Does anyone have a model that they usually present to their customers?

2. Which services does OACS offer?

Question:

Does anyone have a current overview document with the most important services?

D. How advanced is the partner situation?

1. Developers in Germany or even Cologne, Germany?

My *personal* interpretation:

I know most active people on the oacs forums, but we should really use oacs personal profiles to show how many subscribers are located in a certain country or even city or postal code. We could then have a page with all names ordered by forum activity.

2. OpenACS Companies?

My *personal* interpretation:

Here we go again with the companies page that I mentioned a week ago. We should really show which oacs company is located in which city of which country.

E. How quickly can you implement with OACS?

1. How quickly can you implement a site with a strong orientation to knowledge management, expert management, collaborative work/research, social networking etc.

My *personal* interpretation:

I have to answer this one

(hey, still have some battery power left..)

A. How sustainable is the existence of OpenACS?

The software is forkable, customizable, sustained, maintained, and improved upon by a community of developers. Try that with proprietary software.

A snapshot of the project (taken at any time) could be viewed as a loose international joint-venture of individuals, consultants and companies with collectively overlapping goals.

For marketing purposes, a situation analysis should be made of the openacs system, before its strengths, weaknesses etc are identified and assessed for applicability to any purpose. Some of your questions seem more specific to the latter...

I also think that the fact that OpenACS has never forked is really important...

*Attention: Here comes a little flame...* I mean, what can you expect from a guy (and as far as I analyzed PHP-Nuke, it is one guy that has cvs access and some servants that contribute bugs) that makes the following remarks on his FAQ:

#####

- Is PHP-Nuke on sale?

If you consider that you can make a good offer for the whole project, the answer is yes. If your offer is far lower than US$300,000 don't waste your time. For any related comments and possible negotiations you can contact me here. Any offer will be considered strictly confidential."

- Where is the CVS?

There isn't any CVS for PHP-Nuke.

- Can I copy and use your topics graphics?

Absolutely No. All the topics graphics has been made by me and have copyright. You can't copy, modify and/or use those graphics. You can only use "phpnuke.gif" topic image to setup a topic in your web site that refers "only" to PHP-Nuke. Will be exceptions to this rule for PHP-Nuke community's sites. If you run a community support site (for PHP-Nuke ONLY), drop me line. You'll need my written permission to use them. Be fair and don't play with my hard work.

#####

Nothing more has to be said about their/his understanding of the spirit and collaboration model of open source. Well I would fork, too 😉

On the other hand I found out that PHP-Nuke doesn't support groups. Hmmmmm that's really bad. If they don't support groups they probably don't support subsites etc. either.

Another point.

OpenACS is not inherently anti-mysql, it's just that mysql does not (did not?) meet the performance criteria necessary to run openacs. MySQL states on their website that they plan to be 100% sql92 compliant, so maybe someday there will be 3 databases Openacs can use.

<blockquote> In regard to MySQL ... to amplify a bit on some of the comments
above.

MySQL has matured greatly since the days in which the "Why not
MySQL?" article and the subsequent discussion were written.  They do
have an ACID-compliant backend (InnoDB) - not written by Monte and
the gang, of course.  The article's  very much out of date.  On the
other hand, it's a good reference for making clear why we originally
chose PostgreSQL as our open source RDBMS back end rather than
MySQL.

If MySQL becomes SQL92 compliant (how are they coming on
subselects?) then there's every likelihood that OpenACS *could*
  be ported to MySQL.
</blockquote>

On that front.  In my area we have a new person that is becoming
involved in the local LUGs and User Groups.  He is an
employee of MySQL.  He seems a very agreeable person.  I had
a breif email discussion with him about attending a OpenACS
social or such and making himself available for a discussion of
what would be needed in MySQL to run OpenACS.  He was aware
of the 'Why Not MySQL' page on OpenACS and appeared to be
more than willing and to follow up  on it.  Now if any OpenACS
people are willing to pay a visit to Northeast Ohio we might be able to
set something up.  Perhaps even to just create a new and updated
'Why Not MySQL' page.

<blockquote> Yet I doubt there's going to be much enthusiasm for the idea. 
PostgreSQL continues to improve at a very rapid pace.  While MySQL
is more widely used, it would be incorrect to say that PostgreSQL is
not widely used, and it is still a more mature and robust RDBMS.
</blockquote>

This is agreed here.  PostgreSQL is a wonderful database and
still has a lead in maturity with MySQL.  MySQL is more widely
deployed and therefore people have the 'Why are you not using
MySQL' attitude when it comes to Open Source projects.  This
is enough of a ``problem'' that it comes up about every 3 months
or so on the list.

<blockquote> And most importantly ... the cost of maintaining a third database
implementation would be high, and we certainly will not abandon
our OpenACS/PG base of users.  We have better things to do with
our time.

If we were to undertake the support of a third RDBMS, one could
make a much stronger argument for supporting MS SQL Server
than MySQL.
</blockquote>

I disagree slightly.  I think the better argument is to consider supporting
MySQL.  MySQL can not be used because it doesn't have the features
need by OpenACS.  I believe it can be said, with little argument, that
having MySQL support OpenACS's database requirements would only
improve it and make in a more attractive project.  I think, but I don't
know, that the people behind MySQL might be willing to work with
another Open Source project.

Since OpenACS has to deal with the question of not supporting MySQL
and we have some valid reason for not doing,  I think we have the
option of engaging MySQL and discussing it with them.  If they choose
to not work with OpenACS we'll have good reasons.  If they choose
to listen and work to add the required bits that are needed it would
only improve a highly visable and widely deployed Open Source project.

Good point Tracy ...

In regard to MySQL ... we don't link to the "Why not MySQL?" page on our site any more.  We've kept it around for historical reasons only.  Google finds it ... but there's a bold disclaimer at the top saying THIS IS OUT OF DATE.

We really don't get too many people asking for MySQL support any more.  PostgreSQL, while not as popular as MySQL, has a great deal of credibility in the Open Source world.

We don't see as much demand for SQL Server, either, these days, not like we did two years ago.

My estimate is that adding a third database to the mix would increase our development, maintenance and documentation effort by about 25%.  As it is we've been unable to keep our two databases in lockstep ... there are contrib packages that support one or the other but not both RDBMS's.