Re: [cobalt-users] Chilisoft ASP

[Kris Dahl <kris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 2/3/00 3:38 PM, Lyle Scheer at lyle@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>> I am not so much irritated at the fact that they are adopting
>> it, but at the
>> fact that they are ignoring PHP.  We have a proven, tested,
>> superior product
>> that is not in any way attached to Microsoft, and Cobalts is
>> choosing to go
>> with hack of a hacked Microsoft product (which was a hack to
>> begin with)?!?!
>> Its nutz.
> 
> It's interesting.  Cobalt has a business development group that works with
> companies that want their software on our product.  Those companies provide
> the resources to put that code on our products.  Cobalt has a finite
> engineering staff that is dedicated to creating and maintaining products.
> I'm not trying to excuse Cobalt by not focusing on PHP, which is obviously
> useful... I'm just pointing out that the mechanism we are using to create
> more and varied custom servers and services out of our core product requires
> an outside team to spend resource creating a particular solution.  Because
> Chilisoft has that resource that they are willing to dedicate, we end up
> selling a "Chilisoft box".

The jist of the press release that I read seemed to be that Cobalt was
'partnering' with ChiliSoft.  I completely agree that Cobalt should leverage
outside closed-source and open-source developers.  I just would like to see
press releases like "Cobalt Parters with Samba team to help optimize
performacne,", etc.  I am sure that the Cobalt team members are
participating in these groups to make better products--it would be cool to
hear more about it.

My question would be this: If someone/group came up with a package for the
Raq3 and a way to have Cobalt market it as their own, would Cobalt 'partner'
in attempt to offer more off-the-shelf software solutions?  Open source
teams don't tend to have the resources to really do this, but I am sure that
maybe some of us would be more than happy to help with building some
distributions and documentation, etc.  I guess, more precisely, what can
someone do to try to get more/better software solutions for the Cobalt
products?  What is the development group doing to try to better integrate
stuff like PHP, etc.?

> I don't think it is a matter of someone at Cobalt saying, "Hmmm... PHP or
> Chilisoft?  I think I'll go Chilisoft."  It's more like Chilisoft preparing
> and creating an installable product that gets placed on our machine, but
> there is no advocate group from the open source community working with our
> business development group creating a PHP package to be put on our machine,
> merely some users asking why Cobalt isn't expending the resource to do so
> itself.

I think you are correct here--but the press releases seem to imply that the
CEO of Cobalt is choosing ASP technology--and it makes it look like the
whole company is too.  It doesn't mention anything like "Partnering with
ChiliSoft has made Cobalt server appliances one of the most universal active
content web servers" or stress that you can do PHP OR ASP (at the same time
no less).  It does say in there that paraphrasing from memory "ASP was
traditionally a technology only available on NT" which seemed to me the way
it was worded that until now to do active content, you pretty much needed
NT.

> I'm in no way advocating any particular practice or model, I am pointing out
> a business model that we are using that may give you an insight into how
> solutions may get on our products.

Certainly... And it makes sense--I think that by discussing the issues we
are coming up with some ways that we can try to make these products sell
better, as well as serve the customers.  Trying to build more features and
software solutions ready to rock on the machines is a big part of that.
Hopefully, a by-product of discussions like this will be that the Cobalt
products will continually improve--and we'll have things like PHP supported
out of the box.
 
> Now, I am fully prepared to agree that PHP is superior to Chilisoft even
> though I don't know much about either, but I believe in the open source
> model producing good code.  I am also in the terms of this discussion going
> to assume that our business model is not likely to change.  The question I
> come up with is:  How can third parties that aren't really interested in
> developing their solution commercially but have useful applications have
> their code available on Cobalt products?

That I guess IS the real question.  I am sure that some of the development
teams that are large and have main contributors would be willing to lend a
hand in this respect.  The PHP group may be actually an ideal
canditate--hungry for market share but a lot of people behind the project.
I am trying to think of a couple of others that might be interesting to
approach.  Would someone from the biz development group maybe want to shine
some light on the subject and maybe answer some of these questions?

-k