From: Peter.Averkamp@e20.physik.tu-muenchen.de (Peter Averkamp)
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.khoros
Subject: Comment to Krohn's response
Date: 7 Apr 92 20:35:15 GMT
Article-I.D.: pprg.37320


While I think all readers of the list agree that we are grateful for what
the Khoros Group has given to the Network Community, i would like to make
some remarks to Dennis Krohn's response:
1.) The "Not Invented Here"-syndrome.
    Sometimes its faster to re-describe the invention of the wheel
    with your own words/C-code. I understand that some tools seem to
    be really reinvented, and hints/cross-connections to other open
    systems on the net might really cut down the efforts a bit, BUT
    ours, the users' will rise if we have to maintain many tools.
    While this is Ok for big institutions, there are quite a lot
    of groups that are simply not able to maintain lots of different
    packages. We do, I'm shure you do, but what does the 3-man 
    biology group with two slc's do? 
2.) Going to the net for funding.
    It makes a big difference if you provide a very useful thing people
    can rely on and build applications they are continuously using, or
    want funding for a tool that's very necessary, but only used once
    in a while. Khoros clearly belongs to the first group, which means
    that lots of people appreciate its mere existance day by day. Therefore
    nobody who uses it will have a problem to find arguments for supporting
    it. Ok, i know that it's very hard to get the management to actually
    pay for anything you are already using (I am into the process of getting 
    our management to pay for a Consortium membership), but even then
    it is a very good deal. Of course, it would be easier if one could
    symbolically buy anything (e.g. a manual or something) with a
    bill & a price tag that was previously negotiated. This is at least
    the case over here in Germany.
2.a) Cutting down the dialogue in the newsgroups.
    While it might be true that this buys the group time, I would rather
    say this sounds like a bad idea. The massive dialogue is one of
    the groups and its users' biggest strengths. Of course there are
    always questions of the 'How do i copy a glyph'-type and i agree
    with John Rasure that these should be answered by the user community,
    but there is nothing to match the outstanding quality of the responses
    of the khoros group when it comes to really tricky problems. So if
    you meant: Only answer if nobody else does, why not. There is now
    a half way grown-up user community that just may need a little help
    now and then. 
3.) Focussing on a tighter concept & code base.
    Arrgh! While I personnaly feel that, e.g. supporting many flavours
    of window sytems is not necessary for me, many potential users
    will see it the opposite way. Its like in a growth market: as
    long as the community grows faster than the concept&code base,
    there is good chance that investment returns. And i believe
    that the current user base is very small compared to what it
    could be if everybody who already wants something like khoros
    would know it exists. Of course the current restriction to unix 
    imposes a big barrier. So i would conclude the contrary: 
    If khoros was available for regular PC's (at a PC-penalty cost
    of course :^) ), i am totally convinced that the return would
    be overwhelming. Of course this would drive the project more
    and more towards a commercial aspect. While this is rather
    undesireable in the unix world today, it might be more acceptable
    in the PC world. (Ok, I just don't like DOS; forget the last 
    sentence).
4.) Totally aggreed.

I hope that lively discussion will continue. The above opinions
are of course my very personal ones, etc.,etc.

- Peter Averkamp - 

Peter Averkamp,                      | email:
Physics Department E20               | petav@radon.e20.physik.tu-muenchen.de
Techn. Univ. of Munich               | Phone: ++49 (89) 3209-2408
D-8046 Garching, Germany             | Fax:   ++49 (89) 3209-2338