Forum OpenACS Q&A: Company Listing on OpenACS.org

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
I was looking through the company listing on the new openacs.org site,
currently at dev.openacs.org coming to openacs.org soon!

I noticed more than one comapny listing that did not mention OpenACS,
nor did their site mention OpenACS. OpenACS itself does not require (i
think) any advertisment of the software in its use. So a company could
use OpenACS without advertising the fact. I have no problem with that.

Should we ask companies that list on the openacs.org web site to
provide a link back to use or mention somewhere that they use OpenACS
so visitors to the site will be sure to get quality links to people
who can help them implement OpenACS?

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Posted by Ben Adida on
It's definitely been my policy since the beginning that all companies listed need to mention and link to OpenACS on an easily-accessible page. Basically, within 2-3 minutes of browsing the company's site, people should know that they're using OpenACS in some way or another.

I think we should keep this policy: if pages have changed, we should kindly ask that those who want to remain listed on OpenACS.org continue to mention OpenACS.

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Posted by Don Baccus on
Yes, definitely.  We're giving them visiblity, they need to give visibility back.
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Posted by Roberto Mello on
It only sounds fair to me. It seems that some companies that are listed on openacs.org don't mention OpenACS on their pages.

-Roberto

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Posted by Michael Bryzek on
We should be all means ask other companies to link to OpenACS but not require it. The OpenACS community benefits as a whole when the number of people using the system to build production websites grows. As a new user, if I see 1000+ production sites built with openacs.org I would be more compelled to look more closely at the toolkit.

One idea is for the OpenACS.org site to promote in some way the sites which provide prominent links back to openacs.org while still allowing anybody to post that their site was built using this toolkit. The implementation could be as simple as ordering the links on the OpenACS Sites page so that those which link back to openacs.org get listed first. Maybe these friendly sites get highlighted in another way or promoted randomly on other pages within openacs.org.

Another idea would be to create a portlet on the openacs.org home page which randomly highlights one of these friendly sites e.g. "Today's featured site built with OACS". This  would provide relevent content for openacs.org while providing much higher visibility to sites that link back to openacs.org.

As a concrete example, http://www.transparentnetworks.com is a very simple, mostly static, site which was built using OpenACS 4.5. The company doesn't care that it is using an open source toolkit but it is still important, imho, for others to see that OpenACS was chosen as the platform for yet another company's web presence.

-Mike

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Michael,

We are talking about two different things. The "Sites" listing of web sites that use OpenACS does not need a link back. Although it would be nice.

We are talking about the Companies list which should list companies that can help someone implement a web site using OpenACS. That is companies that offer OpenACS consulting. So yes, I think if we link to a comapny saying "if you need help with OpenACS, these companies can help you", we can expect that the companies in the list will actually say how they can help with OpenACS.

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Posted by Michael Bryzek on
Dave,

Thanks for the clarification (and sorry for my confusion!). It makes much more sense now to ask for links back to openacs.org.

-Mike

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Posted by Jon Griffin on
Can we please get rid of the companies that don't have anything to do with OpenACS?

I just looked there and some have nothing to do with our project. This is rather annoying to me at any rate as some companies that actually contribute to OACS are listed well below these CRM, Zope etc shops.

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Posted by Roberto Mello on
I'm looking at the companies listing. If your company doesn't mention OpenACS somewhere in your site, then I'll take it off our listing.

If your company laters starts referring to OpenACS is some way, then you can just talk to one of the Openacs.org folks (me, dave bauer, jeff davis, ben adida, etc.) and we'll get it back there.

eFaber says, in spanish, that they use ACS when the database is Oracle, and OpenACS when the database is PostgreSQL. Since they link to OpenACS, I'll classify that as a pass, but it's innacurate as far as openacs goes.

-Roberto

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Posted by Roberto Mello on
Ok, here's the report:

eGenius is gone. Didn't mention OpenACS anywhere.

InfiniteInfo mentions is briefly in its portfolio of solutions. It's not a link (which we'd appreciate if it were), but I let it pass.

NetEffect mentions OpenACS as "a group of international volunteers" in the context of dotLRN. A pass, but the reference could be better.

mayuli.com is not resolvable, by me at least (dead?). I heard this is Jon Griffin's. Jon, is this live?

Couldn't find any reference to OpenACS from quest.ie. Removed.

Lerner Consulting mentions ACS as "a collection of software tools written and distributed (as open-source software) by ArsDigita Inc." and OpenACS as the port to PostgreSQL. This is probably an oversight by Reuven which I'm confident he'll fix. So I left it.

startforyou.com has no link to openacs. Just a link to a bunch of other sites. Removed.

zill.net mentions OpenACS in several places, but no link. Left, but we'd ask that a link be placed.

Sussdorff & roy doesn't have a direct reference to OpenACS. Malte, can you fix that please?

Runtime Collective, OpenMSG and Vorteon don't have blurbs. Please send me the blurbs I should put there so that can be fixed.

Thanks to Jeff Davis and Bart for the help. If the link to any company was removed in error, I apologize in advance. Just let me know and we'll get it back.

-Roberto

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Posted by Jon Griffin on
mayuli.com is up, but for some reason www.mayuli.com isn't. But the answer is yes it is live. I will make sure the nameserver is working correctly.
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Posted by Patrick Giagnocavo on
re: zill.net: I have made the first mention of OpenACS be a link to http://openacs.org - I can add the little "powered by OpenACS" logo if you tell me which one is the official logo.
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Posted by Simon at TCB on
Hey, thats a bit draconian. Surely companies should be eligible if they 'contribute' in any significant way?
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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Simon,

The list is supposed to be of companies that can help install and customize OpenACS. So i think actually mentioning that the company uses OpenACS is not so strict.

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Posted by Roberto Mello on
We are not a police force. We are being understanding. We are contacting the sites whose listings are removed or in danger of being removed and letting them know, so the situation can be corrected.

Brian, from quest.ie, already replied. Others will follow.

To complement what davb said, we don't want a company listing that does CMS, or websites or whatever, but has nothing to do with OpenACS whatsoever.

If a company does "significanlty contributed" to OpenACS, I'd think they would be mentioning OpenACS somewhere on their site already.

-Roberto