[thelist] What tools should I use?

Anthony Ettinger apwebdesign at yahoo.com
Mon Sep 12 12:24:26 CDT 2005


>From my experience, most of the proprietary solutions
change the licensing and are more restrictive (unless
you pay big $$) if you want to use it for commercial
purposes.

A good example of this is Google's Web API (Free to
play with, but if you want to use it for commercial
purposes, you'd be violating their terms and
services).

Same idea applies to a lot of these
"demo/freeware/shareware" type apps. It's NOT open
source in the traditional sense (ie - GPL).

I am not willing to use something for free while I'm
developing a site, only to have to pay big bucks once
my business becomes successful to legitimize it's
licensing.


--- Ian Anderson <ian at zstudio.co.uk> wrote:

> April wrote:
> 
> > To start with, the initial licensing costs to set
> up a server aren't 
> > completely trivial.  For example, check out 
> >
> http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx.
> I don't run a 
> > Windows server so I don't know if there's a way
> around paying $667 to 
> > have SQL server on your own server, but that page
> sure looks daunting.
> 
> I disagree. Microsoft provide you with the Developer
> Edition of SQL 
> Server for UK £30 on a CD. It costs less than a
> textbook, and is the 
> full production installation of SQL Server and all
> the client tools. Not 
> time limited or feature impaired in any way.
> 
> You don't have to pay a penny more than this and the
> Windows XP Pro that 
> you probably already have on your PC to have a
> production environment 
> suitable for development and testing.
> 
> In my opinion, the open-source option may be much
> more costly for some 
> of the reasons that have already been stated and
> more.
> 
> e.g.
> 
> 1. Poor documentation and specification of standard
> features
> 
> 2. Differences in deployment on different servers;
> some ISPs have older 
> versions of PHP and MySQL, and it really matters.
> For example, older 
> MySQL doesn't support subqueries. It cost me two
> days to find this out 
> when a site that worked perfectly on my hosting
> broke when ported onto 
> the client's web space and a lot of SQL and PHP code
> had to be 
> rewritten. Now I know to check the version of PHP
> and of MySQL before I 
> start, and most importantly do a phpinfo() on the
> new box to check its setup
> 
> 3. PHP setup varies immensely. e.g.; to protect
> against SQL injection 
> and to allow ' in form input, you should use the
> addslashes function on 
> all content from the browser, including cookies, GET
> and POST data. 
> EXCEPT, if the server has the magic quotes feature
> turned on, which does 
> this automatically, then you must not use it!
> Because you get the 
> escaping of ' done twice.  Some ISPs have it on,
> some don't. How can you 
> write portable code? You have to use a specific
> function to test if 
> magic quotes is on then write two different versions
> of the code that 
> imports any input from the user! It's a joke.
> 
> There is also much more scope for errors when
> learning LAMP; for 
> instance, when setting up MySQL tables under
> PHPMyAdmin you are asked to 
> specify which table types to use. Beginners should
> not be exposed to 
> this sort of thing, and costly errors are very easy.
> 
> In my opinon the learning curve with Classic ASP was
> easier than that 
> with PHP; I am glad I learned ASP first, but I am
> also glad I now know PHP.
> 
> In the UK commercial web design market, PHP and LAMP
> is probably more 
> desirable to have in terms of getting freelance
> work, but is likely to 
> be slower and more frustrating to learn, IMO.
> 
> Hope this helps
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Ian
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> * * Please support the community that supports you. 
> * *
> http://evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
> 
> For unsubscribe and other options, including the Tip
> Harvester 
> and archives of thelist go to:
> http://lists.evolt.org 
> Workers of the Web, evolt ! 
> 


Anthony Ettinger
ph: (408) 656-2473
blog: http://www.chovy.com

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


More information about the thelist mailing list