A confused Network Admin

[Jacob Delfos]

I agree very much with Marco's point, in that it doesn't matter how great a program is, because as long as the target user can not do his average day-to-day job with it, the program will not be successful, and the effort of writing code has not been maximum taken advantage of. A lesser quality, more expensive, but user-friendly program that does do the job, will prevail (ESRI is full of bugs, but there is no real substitute).

That being said, I think in the case of mapserver, being a rather specialised application, you should be expected to have a basic background in what you are doing. Documentation should not substitute for that. In fact, if just anyone could get it to work, you'd run into quality (and liability) problems, because they'd get it working without understanding whether it is working correctly ("it looks correct and pretty, after all"). You end up with map-makers calling themselves "system analysts" (no offense to anyone), shooting themselves in the foot (is there a "shoot in foot" joke for mapscript yet?).

I think mapserver is fairly well documented (it must be, if I got it to work). Only thing I think could be useful is a glossary of terminology ('mapserver','mapscript', etc.), for new users. I am very grateful to be able to make use of it for free.

regards,

Jacob




-----Original Message-----
From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On Behalf Of Marco Marsella
Sent: 3 March 2005 14:37
To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] A confused Network Admin

Whoa! I can see that documentation and support are sensitive issues!

While I regret not having been able to participate in the discussion
due to time-zone differences, I would like to add a few points, very
briefly:

- no doubt, Mapserver is great as great are the people developing it
and helping us all on the list and writing the documentation that's
available

- I see from some posts the usual mistake: code is great, docs can
wait. Nothing could be more wrong! Docs is as important as code!
OpenSource is making the difference with the code, which is wonderful,
but we also need to make a difference with documentation and support.
Why do you think Microsoft and ESRI are still the market benemoths they
are ? Because companies *need* support and commercial software provides
support (well, I know what you will say to this, but you see what I
mean)

- I *will* join the MSDP and do my best!

Thank you all.

Marco
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