[ic] Frustrated with IC 4.8

interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
Mon Sep 17 10:13:01 2001


Quoting Kat Turner (ronzokat@hotmail.com):
> How is it that IC 4.8 can have so many great features and be so ill behaved 
> in implamenting them?

I will weigh in a bit on this since it seems to have excited some
interest.

We only have a limited amount of resource with which to develop
Interchange. Interchange a development system to produce online shops
and custom content management. The UI is an attempt to bring some of
that power to users who are not Perl and web experts. We have been
successful in that in some ways, and not in others.

If everyone who was on the mail list was spending money with Red Hat, using
our support services, instead of downloading the program for free
and then using the mail list, we would, I guarantee, devote more resources
to improving the program. We don't expect that, of course, but the fact
remains that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Perhaps we should devote more of our time to polishing the UI instead
of improving feature content, and to some extent we are doing so, but
we are limited in resources. The only way we will get more resources is
for people to spend money with us. There are some ways to do this. You can
purchase the E-commerce suite and get a year's worth of support with
people to answer your questions as they come up. Or, you can retain us
for a few hours of technical support so we can answer your questions
and provide guidance.

The predecessor to Interchange, Minivend, was largely supported by
the clients who engaged me to do work for them based on Minivend.
Most of them have never inhabited the mail list, so you wouldn't
know them. But they had as much, no more, to do with the longevity
of Interchange than anyone. If I hadn't been able to eat, then
I would have done something else.

Can Interchange get better? Yes, it consistently has. But it doesn't
happen overnight and it happens in direct proportion to the amount
of support that its users give it. That support can come in the form
of efforts like those of Racke, who has more to do with developing
Interchange than most of you know. It can come in the form of
*well-documented, well-reasoned* bug reports to Bugzilla. It can
come in the form of helping other users on the mail list when you
can. It can come in the form of small self-contained contributions
to the documentation or utilities -- the work of various people on
payment systems is an example. Or it can come in the form of
money. All help.

I have devoted six years to this project. I have discovered that no
matter what I do will never satisfy everyone. So I just do the best I
can and trust that is enough. 8-)

Mike
-- 
Red Hat, Inc., 3005 Nichols Rd., Hamilton, OH  45013
phone +1.513.523.7621      <mheins@redhat.com>

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