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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Small grumble: cough up the dollars or sufferSmall grumble: cough up the dollars or suffer
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10/14/2009 2:48 PM
 

Hi folks

I have just ironed out the final bugs in my software that were generated by the shift from 4 to 5. Notably, the Control Titles were not appearing on some screens. By trial and error I discovered that the ascx page key in the resx file needed to be all lower case,

i.e. ControlTitle_Order.Text did not work but ControlTitle_order does. As a VB developer you don't tend to think of case sensitivity like this.

Now it seems to me that this is the sort of problem that many module developers must have encountered and that I ought to be able to record in a Wiki or somewhere. I know the answer is probably "yes, you can but you have to subscribe to DNN Professional or Developer to access the knowledge base", but isn't that just divisive and contrary to the spirit of open source development?

Or is it already well covered elsewhere in these forums and my surfing has failed to turn it up?

Just a thought.

Kind regards

Geoffrey Morton-Haworth

 


Geoffrey Morton-Haworth www.yalaworld.net
 
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10/14/2009 6:05 PM
 

Errors in the code should be recorded as gemini issues, that way the development team can see them and fix them (IMHO wiki's are for product documentation, not errors - that's what error issuetrackers are for, as you need to record version information etc. - though I suspect any wiki will end up with a page linking to gemini to aggregate common issues and known workarounds). BTW I looked into this a few times before and was not able to recreate it, though I did not consider case-sensitivity, so I'll reexamine it again. However, it may not be directly code related i.e. it might be to do with your version of the .net framework or your PC localisation settings or even the version of vs.net youre using, hence why you noticed the problem and others didnt (I haven't validated this yet, but would have expected more people to have this issue than have reported it)

Regarding a wiki, we're still working hard on this, and have identified the software to use (but are waiting on an update for a particular feature), as well as planning out the security structure etc. It will be a public wiki, not one limited to PE customers.

Regarding the PE knowledgebase, it contains a multitude of items including tutorials, how-to's,useful info, installation & configuration guidelines which were written for PE customers - just in the same way that ISP's/hosting providers/independant developers write documentation for their customers. There is also a list detailing some of the more common errors encountered with both the core and 3rd party modules, but this comes from posts in gemini/forums - we just tidy it up and aggregate it for PE customers. I don't think any of this is devisive or against OSS principles - if you look at any popular project you'll see the same i.e. the information is readily available, but can take time to gather, whereas a Pro version saves you this time - this is one of the reasons for subscribing i.e. time=money is important for many people.

Another point about the Pro offering - if you'd been a pro customer and raised this as an issue , the support team would have worked through it until they worked out a solution and then resolved it (as per the terms of the support agreement) - the ability to not have to rely on volunteer/oss efforts is important to many people, and hence why they take our a pro version.

I'll flag this post with the team and hopefully it can get fixed for 5.2.

Cathal


Buy the new Professional DNN7: Open Source .NET CMS Platform book Amazon US
 
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10/14/2009 11:50 PM
 

As a developer just now taking a dive in to DNN for a specific contract requirement, I have to echo the sentiments of the thread author.

Coming from a Sitefinity background, I find it questionable to assume that developers will find it worth their time to learn DNN in the first place when comparable frameworks are squarely targeting the development community with a wealth of free knowledge.  Empowering developers to rapidly learn about your product while actively engaging the community for support issues leads to happy developers.  Happy developers equates to strong technical recommendations to the folks with the purse strings, which leads to well qualified clients willing to pay for enterprise support and enhancement packages.

DNN does not do this.  I am finding this to be extremely disappointing.  This is the reason I could not jump in to the DNN world 6 years ago when I was first beginning to understand the role of CMS based solutions and the potential of such "user empowerment' based frameworks.  The fact of the matter is CMS frameworks have become a commodity.  Availability of comprehensive documentation and a very active, comprehensive development community represent massive value to a developer (who usually doesn't have the checkbook). 

DNN's competition provides this for free.

DNN is the odd-man-out here.  DNN is not an ISP (who, btw, generally make their knowledgebases public), it is a framework for developers to extend.  It's one thing to impute a premium on instance-specific development inquiries, it's quite another to assign the same value to items such as "tutorials, how-to's,useful info, installation & configuration guidelines".  That's basic stuff.  Can you imagine MS suddenly slamming the door on http://msdn.microsoft.com or http://asp.net?  That would be suicide.

In short, I understand the need to draw a line SOMEWHERE in order to properly monetize the resource investment in the core product, but I think you've drawn it with the wrong target demographic.  The additional features and personal support has a lot of value for enterprise SLA obligations.  The problem is none of that matters if developers are avoiding the platform like the plague to begin with.  It doesn't make good business sense to put your product in a position where developers and architects can't even get started without a horrific amount of research and are subsequently going to actively oppose selecting DNN for enterprise projects. 

I don't understand this business model.  Not today.

 

 
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10/15/2009 3:29 AM
 

There is a wealth of free documentation available, from downloadable docs (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Support/Documentation/DownloadableFiles/tabid/478/Default.aspx) to forums,videos, issuetrackers and webinars, as well as many blogs etc., with a wiki under development hopefully for release in the next month.

The point I was making was that the PE offering does not have some additional trove of developer documentation that we keep hidden away from the community - the documention is primarily to help with install/upgrade scenarios as well as common configuration - items that business's deploying DotNetNuke are most interested in. The reality is that documentation is typically one of the weakest points of OSS solutions, as writing documents is "boring" and therefore few volunteers step up and do any - the addition of a wiki is designed to help with this as people are more likely to contribute an article/code snippet or other small nugget of information, rather than a fully-fledged document. The reason there is additional PE documentation is that people are paid to do this work - and this work is appreciated by paying customers. As much as we'd like to give it all away for free, it's a key part of our offering so not really feasible - though some of the work will no doubt end up in the public domain such as the wiki - and some paid staff are doing work on this area that benefit the community e.g. I and another Corp member have spent plenty of paid time evaluating and planning the wiki, and will probably spend much more seeding it with useful information, as well as maintaining it.

There are a vast number of business models in both commercial and commercial OSS, and none that satisfy everyones needs or desires (even in free OSS, the same complaints about lack of documentation abound) - the simple fact is that if the business model is not succesful I'm sure it will be changed, otherwise we cease to exist. At present a lot of developers and other staff (e.g. the ones who deal with items such as server maintenance/QA etc., as well as sales/marketing etc.) are having their wages paid by the customers of the PE offering - but still spend a substantial amount of time doing work on the core project, benefiting the many users who either don't want to or can't support us financially. I see this as a big bonus for the whole community, and expect us to do more and more as we grow.

Cathal


Buy the new Professional DNN7: Open Source .NET CMS Platform book Amazon US
 
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10/15/2009 11:18 AM
 

Thank you for that reply Cathal.

I have already consumed much of the content available at the link provided and was indeed able to use that information to bootstrap myself in to a basic understanding of the framework.  I am pleased to hear that a developer-focused wiki is in the works and I hope it will address the shortcomings in currently available documentation which are (apparently intentionally) causing a good deal of pain for folks like myself attempting to wrap their head around the platform.

I would argue that the real value for your PE customers is in the enterprise grade support and additional framework features.  While it is sheer speculation, I would imagine that not many organizations opted for the PE model just to get access to quality documentation.  For my clients, I most often see the need to purchase enterprise SLA's for production environments for the comprehensive individual support and/or additional features for almost any product that is to be deployed on a reasonbly large scale.  I'll pay for that.  My clients will pay for that.

I'm unlikely to opt for an enterprise SLA just so I can get access to an aggregated repository of common issues, vulnerabilities (seriously, you're withholding vulnerability information?), best patterns and practices and other fairly standard material.  I am, however, fairly likely to opt to pass on a framework for not providing these materials without a hefty payment.  It becomes much more difficult to learn the framework in the first place which greatly reduces my personal ROI for championing the framework to my clients as I have to spend many, many hours to research what has already been done.  It is also more difficult for me to sell the framework to clients when I am unable to demonstrate comprehensive support and an active development community when stacking options such as DNN next to the alternatives.

You folks deserve to get paid.  You have put together a decent framework that brings real value to an array of different classes of organizations.  I urge you to explore embracing developers and pushing for organic adoption among the development community.  The current focus seems to be on the "average joe " and/or business user.  I strongly feel the contracts you may possibly lose due to no longer guarding documentation would be handily addressed by the contracts you may gain by pushing the DNN brand to the front of a developers mind when discussing appropriate products to address business needs.  Let's not forget that those developers tend to eventually become architects as well.  Why not drive adoption from as many avenues as possible?

That's my 2.5 cents, and then some.  ;)

 
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