On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Paul M Foster wrote:
> I've got a customer that I've set up with my ISP (XO), and we're also
> setting up e-commerce for her. On the low end, XO uses something called
> Miva, which is, nearest I can figure, like a proprietary sort of PHP.
> Docs suck, interface sucks, etc.
hmmm ... I support a Linux Miva server and a Linux PHP server at a
site I admin for -- customers get on the PHP server for $n per
month and $m setup; Miva users pay an extra $250 or so setup for
the Miva license -- but I saw that Cobalt was bundling a 'free'
Miva license -- Miva sells upgrades every 4 months or so, and
obsoletes this years' version, seemingly on a 18 mo cycle -- sound
familiar?
Miva T/S is pretty responsive, and there is formal training
available in San Diego, and a pretty good doco manual.
And it DOES do credit card auth's, and UPS shipping calculations,
and a nice shopping cart, and beautiful graphic themes for novices
with no artistuc skills. These are important.
But I wouldn't use it personally for Open Source politics reasons
...
> Anyway, XO is running on Sun boxes with Apache as their web server, and
> you have the ability to run your own CGIs, Perl, Python and PHP from
> your domain. So I'm looking for an alternative to this Miva crap.
The whole challenge for Open Source is:
1. Build out the top 80 % of the Application and meta-Application
integration layers which users of proprietary Op Sys's are used to
... The approach of regularly changing closed file formats has been
very effective as a vendor lock tool for Microsoft.
2. Come up with a 'must have' app first, and keep the free version
best. Sendmail, bind, apache, perl come to mind.
The question comes to -- Can you replicate for $250, plus training,
what Miva sells. The answer may not be yes.
As to alternatives, ecommerce means differing things to different
people -- WHICH ecommerce functions?
-- Russ Herrold
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