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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] frustrated

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  • From: John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>
  • To: pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] frustrated
  • Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 00:09:55 +0000

Aloha,

I hear ya...my thought is that a lightly funded and newly formed project whose members are still in the "honeymoon" phase does not warrant putting the rest of one's life on hold - get out in the garden, do other stuff that's important to you! I support that.

I agree with you on platform choice, I think I've made that fairly obvious, and I even claim to be the instigator of the whole OO/Zope option.

I will try and wade through the rest of the posts in the next few days.
Meanwhile, I'll reiterate my basics one more time and maybe add a few not yet stated and hopefully that will cover it for now:

I want the best possible platform for the best possible HG.
That ought to IMO determine where we look for hosting, and absolutely not the other way around.
IMO best platform for this project means an OO language - my first choice python - and an OO DB, the best I know of being ZODB.
For the full package, integrating OO language, DB and accessories such as ODB cataloging, indexing and searching, 'clean' (non-HTML-munging) web publishing, etc. that means Zope (ZCatalog, ZPT, etc.).

You've already covered what I would have to say about integrating zope with other stuff. There are adapters and products for most all open source stuff we might need/want to hook into. If we need something not yet existing we create it - no more and probably far less work overall than writing the whole app from scratch.

I do not think any of us are indespensable. If one of us chooses to take their ball and play somewhere else if one or more of our core desires for the project are not met, that's OK by me - our free choice.

I do not support choosing platform, hosting or any other essential project design element(s) based on any individual's statements of intent to leave the project if some element(s) does not suit said individual.

I covered money/hosting considerations in a recent post.
In brief, I think spending most to all of our existing budget on buying someone else a server is a very poor business choice. Hosting is quite cheap compared to payroll. This is basic business knowledge in the software development industry - people are expensive, hardware is cheap. It's a poor business manager who is stingy with hardware, because it costs very little compared to the cost of people sitting around with no or inadequate hardware to use.

Our situation is slightly different, since we aren't getting paid when we're sitting around waiting for hardware (mostly hosting, in our case), and some of us aren't getting paid at all.
However, if we put most of our money into hardware that isn't even ours, we'll have little or nothing left to pay ourselves with when we are able to start development.

Lawrence, your server cost estimates are moot, as ibiblio already stated that the expected cost of the machine they would spec would be $6K - $10K

As for further monies coming in, I think we have gotten very lucky with Jim and I do not assume anything about future funding. I say work with what we've got and get the most we can out of it. If we get more great, and no counting chickens when the eggs (or is that hens? ;-) aren't even laid yet.

Also on hosting - we don't even know if we can host our issue tracker on ibiblio yet, never mind zope!

--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net




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