[steering] Migration plan (was: Gonna start calling votes)

[Martin Burns]

On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Dean Mah wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 10:09:11AM +0000, Martin Burns wrote:
>
> > > so, any move we plan for teo/weo really needs to coincide with a
> > > recoding to be compatible with a win2k/mssql environment.
> >
> > I'd be very reluctant to move to anything which adds additional
> > dependencies on things which cost money. I don't want us to be in a
> > position where at some point in the future we're shelling out for
> > win2k/mssql licenses.
>
> Alternatively, we could take the e.o.uk stuff, geeklog (I think), and
> modify it for our needs.  Then we'd be using all open source stuff
> (likely at no cost): PHP, mysql, Linux, Apache, mailman, [sendmail |
> postfix | qmail | smail | exim], Perl, Python.

I can see a lot of sympathy for that (or any other all free in both
senses solution). And then we really *are* looking for a vanilla Linux
host. No licenses to buy - just download, install & configure.

Using a largely packaged solution (and this isn't exclusive to OSS
solutions - Spectra would have been the same) also has the advantages:
1) we're piggybacking on the work of lots of other people - developing,
testing, more testing, documentation etc.
2) therefore we can save our work for customisation rather than core
functionality
3) with the right solution, customisation will tend to be at higher level,
so the barrier to new developers will be lower
4) there will already be 3rd party developers with experience of
customising that solution

Essentially, you're talking about configuring & customising the top level
of detail, rather than writing from scratch. Most of the problems an evolt
cms needs to solve are now well understood and solved by many applications
- which wasn't the case even in 2000, let alone when we launched the 1st
site.

Look at how fast I threw up an evolt-templated wiki
Look at how fast John threw up the eouk site

Cheers
Martin

--
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly
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