Re: Another Midrange Forum Falls Over and Can't Get Up

*** REPLYING TO A THREAD IN MIDRANGE-L ***

Joe Pluta wrote:

It continues to beg the question of whether these "out of the box" systems, especially the Open Source software, are really ready for prime time.

Personally, I consider the phrases "Open Source" and "Out of the box"
mutually exclusive when it comes to web applications.

Anytime you setup an open source web application, you really need to
have a through understanding of what you are doing. And your
implementation plan needs to have plenty of time allocated to a beta
('course that goes for any application really).

Of course there are plenty of bad open source applications out there ...
but there are many really good ones. I've never had a serious problem
with Wordpress. Anyone who is going to roll out an open source application needs to make sure they are on the latest version and check the support forums for any late breaking bug reports and/or patches.

I'm sorry, but software at that level of fragility would never have made it out the door in the 80s and even the early 90s.

The thing about open source software is that it is generally subject to
"Technical Darwinism" ... if there is fragility in the system, and
people notice it, it will get fixed fairly quickly (especially if the
application is popular).

david