Re: FN-FORUM: Best Blog stuff?

date posted 18th January 2006 10:01

Lee Fogarty wrote:
> 1. How much time/money/effort goes into looking at all the open
> source solutions? Trying out the templates, realising it doesn't do
> what you want, move onto the next, etc.

In my experience, that usually takes a lot less time than coding up your
own solution which has all the functionality of an Open Source solution.

But perhaps I'm helped because I'm in touch with the Open Source
community and I often already know which are the applications that
everyone else is using.

> I've just had a guy that's spent 3 weeks looking at shopping cart
> solutions before deciding that none of them fit in with his site. It
> took me a week to give him what he wanted.

If that worked for you in that case then great. Most Open Source
projects have been written over a long period of time by a large number
of contributors, so I doubt you'll usually be able to come up with
something with a comparable level of functionality in a week.

> 2. How many of these 'solutions' are hosted on central servers? Do
> you really want to rely on outside sources to back up your data? If
> you have a blog, shopping cart, forum & newsletter then you've got 4
> points of failure.

Hosted solutions don't tend to be Open Source. If they are Open Source
then what's to stop you installing the system on a server that you control?

> 3. Do you really want 20,000 programmers to look at your site & know
> exactly what scripts you have & where they are stored?

Or, to turn that on its head - isn't it nice to know that the code
you're running has been written in the knowledge that people have access
to the source code and that therefore it's been written to be far more
secure than it might otherwise be.

> 4. If something goes wrong, or you want to make changes, isn't it
> better to talk to the programmer/company rather than posting on a
> forum & waiting days for a response that you might not like?

Generally I find that asking for help in an Open Source support forum is
more effective than going to a commercial company for support. Open
Source projects often patch bugs with days or even hours. I've never
seen that level of response from a commercial company.

And, of course, with Open Source you always have the source code so you
can track down and fix the problem yourself (assuming you have the
skills and the time).

> 5. I assume that people using open source solutions aren't charging
> their customers for these solutions?

Why on Earth not? Open Source has nothing to do with cost. Nothing says
that Open Source software doesn't cost money.

> 6. Templates always look like templates.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here.

> 7. Whose to say that the open source providers won't decide to charge
> in the future? I'll wet myself laughing if phpBB decide to charge
> £100 a time.

You obviously don't understand Open Source licensing. It's quite
possible for phpBB to decide to remove its Open Source license from
future products. But they can't remove it from current products, so an
Open Source project would just spring up to move the product forward.

> 8. What is the point in trying to fit a layout to suit the code? As
> a coder, it is my priority to make the code fit the layout.

Again. I'm not clear what you're saying here.

> I realise I am in the minority here, but my feelings are that open
> source solutions are cheap 'n' nasty.

Apache, the web server that drives 60% of the world wide web is Open Source.
BIND, the most widely used DNS implementation is Open Source.
Sendmail, the most widely used mail transport application is Open Source.
Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby, four of the the most commonly used
programming languages for web applications are all Open Source.

Are these Open Source solutions all "cheap 'n' nasty" in your opinion?

Dave...

--
Magnum Solutions Ltd
Open Source Consultancy, Development and Training