Re: [cobalt-users] Chilisoft got owned

["Robert G. Fisher" <rfisher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 23, 2000 at 04:26:05PM -0800, Kris Dahl wrote:
> Cobalt just bought Chilisoft.  Rather than support open source projects such
> as PHP (which I feel is vastly superior to ASP, and certainly to a hack of
> ASP), they've decided to purchase a closed-source company to offer this
> so-called 'solution'.

Keep in mind, they are using the 'closed source' ports of Ready-To-Run's
FrontPage SERK -- it only makes sense to combine this with Chillisoft's
port of ASP.  Both the FP SERK and ASP are built to accomadate the MS
market on a unix/linux platform. 

> 1) Opensource Chillisoft's ASP stuff

There may be licensing issues with MicroSoft on that request.
In any event -- face it, the only people who WANT ASP are the
same people who already chose MS's closed-source systems.  I
doubt you'll have much success with demands to get this to be
opened.

> 2) Support and promote PHP *out of the box* as they are no doubt planning to
> do with their new product.

Support of PHP would be a good thing...Promoting...bah...Leave that
to the people who want to use PHP, just list how it can be used,
same as you can use SSI, CGI, and now ASP...

Wonder if they have gotten around to supporting JSP with the RaQ3
or if that's for future release?

> I consider this an absolute insult to the people that have really made
> Cobalt the company that it is.  I'm not saying the Cobalt folks haven't done
> a lot of great work internally, and turned out some decent products.  I am
> saying that it seems as tho the CEO of Cobalt 'Just doesn't get it' as far
> as supporting the Open Source projects.

No offense, but the people who've really made Cobalt what it is 
probably don't give a damn about OpenSource other than the idea
it means lower costs.  OpenSource is a phenomenon really only 
held by developers and system maintainers...The average joe that
looks for a canned application, does so because he doesn't want
to worry about what's all underneath.  

If it's someone who's really gung-ho about OpenSource, chances
are they've already taken a peek at what's there...can we say
strings? what about strace? ltrace? or just good old gdb?

OpenSource is about having the freedom to go in and change
things as you need too.  You still have that freedom with 
most applications on a RaQ.  Just, if you go off on your
own -- you're on your own.

-- 
Robert G. Fisher		     NEOCOM Microspecialists Inc. 
System Administrator/Programmer      (540) 666-9533 x 116