Re: [mv] Preview of Akopia Interchange

[Jon Jensen <jon@akopia.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Jon Jensen <jon@akopia.com>     ******

On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Charlie Blanchard wrote:

> ******    message to minivend-users from Charlie Blanchard <charlie@blanchardsite.com>     ******
> 
> On Thu, Jul 13, 2000 at 09:02:56AM -0400, cfm@maine.com wrote:
> > ******    message to minivend-users from cfm@maine.com     ******
> > 
> > What **I** want for Christmas is a separation of the minivend core and the
> > minivend minimate/user interface into distinct independant packages.  
> > 
> Amen! However, it would appear (I could be wrong) that Mike and
> Akopia have gone the 'marketing' route of so many s/w development
> efforts. That of having to build everything into the product to
> appeal to investors and users and be 'marketable' with flashy
> sales hype, like e.g. Microsoft Office for instance.

All the features that were brought from the Tallyman interface into
Interchange, and new ones that weren't in Tallyman, were things Akopia's
customers and users request on an almost daily basis. There's no
marketing-centricity here ... except that an easy-to-use program is much
more marketable than one that isn't.

> Another reason to offer all-in-one solutions is to lock in users to
> 'your way or the highway' but that doesn't seem logical in an open
> source product so I doubt that it's the case here.

When you see any real evidence of this attitude in the new product, Mike
Heins, or Akopia, I think that suspicion would be a bit more warranted. As
it stands, the interface remains separate, and the underlying Minivend
core is the same one you've been using. The whole product is open source,
and free software to boot. Do you forget that the GPL allows you to take
the code and do your own thing if we ever do something you dislike?

> Forgive me if I come off a bit harsh, it is not my intent but as a
> products development/vision goes from a single person (Mike) to
> multiple persons (Mike+Akopia) focus must give way to other's demands,
> Mike simply isn't calling all the shots anymore. It's a trade-off he
> had to choose. Now he has to live with it. (-:

Or perhaps Mike *wants* a better UI? Have you asked him?

> I look forward to watching how it goes, but my bet would be it
> will NOT develop into 'distinct independant packages' and that's
> truly sad. 

We've actually discussed doing exactly that. We'll see how things develop
in the future. Currently, Interchange can run just fine without any of the
new UI stuff.

Please be a little patient with us. This is an alpha release and of course
still a little raw.

Jon Jensen
Akopia

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