On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 05:28:46AM -0500, IvorW wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: openguides-dev-bounces@openguides.org [mailto:openguides-dev-bounces@openguides.org]On Behalf Of Rev Simon Rumble Sent: 02 December 2005 10:01 To: openguides-dev@openguides.org Subject: Re: [OGDev] Marketing to OG Admins
On 1/12/2005, "(Christopher Schmidt)" crschmidt@crschmidt.net wrote:
If there is a way to make it such that OG can be
installed by anyone
with FTP and MySQL access
Surely if you want to make it as easy as possible, SQLite would be a better option?
Sorry, SQLite won't scale. Concurrent access and locking is something that SQLite doesn't do, though it does have transactions and rollback.
In addition to that, MySQL is a relatively minimal requirement these days, since most packages are PHP/MySQL hosting packages.
What it comes down to for me is that I see OpenGuides suffering because its written in Perl. I see PHP packages - I'm thinking specifically here of Drupal - specifically targeting those users who don't have root accounts, or even the knowledge to run a shell. But they can edit a config file, and they can use FTP. Drupal has more than 60,000 installations - OpenGuides has fewer than 100, at least as far as popular/findable ones go.
If there was a way to package OG such that we could give a simple list of requirements to their host, have them get it installed, and then FTP upload a single set of files - even if its relatively large - then I think that we would see increased adoption.
Perl is scary. It has a bad reputation. People don't want to muck with installing it, most people don't even want to muck with running CPAN. Huge numbers of people don't have the ability to install Debian packages - either because they aren't running Debian, or because they don't have root - and excluding these people as guide admins simply because they don't want to learn Perl is probably not the best idea if you want widespread adoption - and I think OpenGuides taking over the world would be a very good thing indeed.
Maybe I'm overstating the importance that installation has on adoption, but I think that some things speak for themselves. Drupal has a very high adoption rate, and is very easy to install. PHP packages in general get higher adoption rates, and are easier to install. It is my opinion that the easier something is to install, the more likely someone will install it.
OpenGuides does not make things easy to install. I couldn't install it without help, and I'm a relatively competent user who is familiar with CPAN. I can't imagine how anyone could expect that "normal" users could get an OG setup without significant help - and when something doesn't work, people don't usually ask for help, they give up.