[ic] Frustrated with IC 4.8

interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
Mon Sep 17 21:43:01 2001


On Mon, Sep 17, 2001 at 07:57:18PM -0400, Jim Balcom wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Thore Karlsen wrote:
> 
> TK>>You are not the only one, I'm having the same problems. The documentation is
> TK>>worthless, that's the only way to describe it. Open source may be free
> TK>>initially, but I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't have gone with a well
> TK>>documented commercial solution instead. _Time_ certainly isn't free, and you
> TK>>need a lot of time to experiment to get things to work in Interchange.
> 
> I fully agree!
> 
> Stop all development. Write coherent documentation. Release the package for
> a fee. Start new development and sell upgrades.
> 
> I'd rather pay the people at Akopia for a product that is up and running
> quickly, than to waste a lot of my time spinning my wheels.


I beg to differ, strongly.  This is just refusing to take responsibility.

IMCO IC is **too easy**.  Too deceptively easy.  Time and again I
see people on this list way over their heads.  If they cannot run
a server, cannot get permissions right, cannot install from CPAN,
cannot read log files, they are simply out of their depth.  Hell, I
can't even understand half the questions on this list.  Some of
that is my own obtuseness, but not all of it.

There is no amount of better documentation or easier installation
that will make that better.  Making it better, eg "easier", will only
make this problem **worse** and increase the number of painful failures.
One understands how to permission their "vlink" or one guesses; there
is no documentation that would explain how we do it to someone who
did not understand permissions/users/groups.

In that same vein, IC on Windows?  Why RH would stray into those waters?
But I digress.  :-)

Perhaps the Peter Principal applies to software or maybe to those
of us who run it.  MV/IC will perform according to **your** experience
and ability to make it perform.  If you are not comfortable with perl
and sysadmin work, IC is a risky choice.  You can probably cookbook a store
from one of the demos but you will not be able to modify it and you
will not be able to pass the work on.

It is all to Akopia/{R|M}H's credit that it works so well.  It is not
their fault that "everyone" cannot make it work.

cfm







> 
> -= Jim =-
> 
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