[Fsf-friends] fsf must rate and talk about application softwares too

[Ramakrishna Reddy]

On 6/16/06, Kush <be_a_sport at rogers.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Right now it is easy to always go to sites which provide certain kinds
> of application softwares but in the real world people need collaborative
> softwares. I think the business world is using propreitary applications
> for distributed work and we don't have sites which give any ratings for
> such softwares from the open source world.
>

Rating based on what? Most of the projects start as  a  hobby to solve
one own need or purpose, when someone who's also in need same kind of
application he would ask the author a copy of it. I think its  a bad
idea for an organisation like FSF to act like Gartner, IDG  to rate a
piece of free software against another free software, esp the
softwares used for Distributed work, where FOSS applications have a
very higher market share than proprietary equivalents.


> I am talking of the virtual private network applications or CRM or CMS
> or wiki type softwares where lay people can really collaborate in an
> office or group setting. We have no rating mechanisms to judge which
> features are better among a group of softwares. Typically people are
> interested in knowing
>

Wikis are one kind of collaborate software, which has seen much
succes, I can't think of a proprietary product, that has seen a wiki
kind of sucess in the recent times.

> 1 whether moin moin is better than (and in what ways) mediawiki or zwiki
> etc etc in the field of wiki softwares. (I came across Moin moin
> accidentally thru the dapper ubuntu cd which features it in the
> opencd.org project.)

Pitching Moin Moin vs Mediawiki or any other piece of software, would
lead just to a flame war. We cant seriously justify why one CMS is
better than another. It all counts down to the user scenario, may be
Rails is cooler than mediawiki, but mediawiki has its own advantages.

> or
> whether egroupware is better than other softwares in the same line?
> (groupware substitutes for lotus notes etc)
> or whether joomla is comparable to drupal or mambo etc etc in features"
> (cms applications)
> or whether openoffice's base application (database) is any good and if
> there are alternatives available in the open source world at present
> which can take on msaccess? (or a workaround with a mysql application
> for ms access)
> or how does freegis compare with postgis and maxdb etc gis application
> softwares ? (in the gis world of open source software)
>
> or whether ruby on rails will soon outpace python, perl and php in web
> based application development? (though perl, php, python each have a
> HUGe body of historical strength)

For Eg.
Ruby on Rails replacing python, perl and php in web app development,
This is one of the popular fads  floating around, Ruby on rails is
only good for some kinda applications where there is lot hierarchy
involved Esp. MVC , it not good for every kinda web development. So
how do ya rate it against a PHP based web app like Mojavi. and pitch
Rails for world domination ?


> Or whether eclipse is better than kdevelop(c++) or anjuta or bluefish or
> boa constructor(python or delphi/pascal) or other IDEs? (when newbies
> have to develop open source softwares)
>
> or the merits/demerits of IDE tools which are linked to version control
> system tools like cvs or subversion etc etc--which are the best tools in
> version control according to various features/parameters
>

This also would lead to a flame war , BTW Emacs still rocks, -----No
Comments------ :D


> or whether there are better tools than argo UML (poseidon is
> propreitary) in the field of application development software in terms
> of high level requirements specifications software and automatic
> generation of software tools
>
> or what are the strengths vs weaknesses in short form and
> dispassionately analysed etc without advertising jargon.
>

RTFM as people would say, to know what the app is good at.

> I don't know any place where such information can be easily read and
> found. and these are the things which really matter for laymen to come
> to speed in the adoption of open source software in India.
> Sourceforge.net earlier used to  give a maturity rating (development
> status) for an application but it does not do so now.

sf.net were smart enough to take out rating system based on maturity

Regards
---
Ramakrishna Reddy                       GPG Key ID:31FF0090
Fingerprint =  18D7 3FC1 784B B57F C08F  32B9 4496 B2A1 31FF 0090